


The Eye of the Storm is the safest Place to Hide

by Jassanja



Category: As the World Turns
Genre: AU, Ex-Gay Movement, F/M, M/M, NaNoWriMo 2010
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-11-27
Updated: 2011-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-13 10:16:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 27
Words: 42,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/136143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jassanja/pseuds/Jassanja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>To what lengths will Damian Grimaldi go to make sure his son will have a happy and normal life?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_"It was a dark and stormy night when Daniel and Roberta cuddled together in front of the fire on the rug and shared a hot, fiery, passionate kiss..."_

Luciano Grimaldi shut his laptop angrily. Sure, it was a dark and stormy night, and there was heavy rain drumming against the window of his father’s mansion, but that was no excuse to get all sentimental.

Writing was something Luciano didn't do. It was part of his past, when he was sure that he was Luke Snyder, a man who could make himself a future with the written word.

He turned to the fire that prattled behind him and reached out for his glass of water, wishing he could be drinking whiskey or something equally strong. But that also belonged to his past as Luke. Luciano was older and wiser, and knew that trying to kill himself wasn't an option.

With a sigh he fell back into his chair and picked up a file for work.  
Helping the hospital build a new neurology wing was more useful than day-dreaming about being a writer. "It was a dark and stormy night!" Really? If that was all he could come up with to start a story then he clearly needed a consult in the new wing as soon as possible himself.

He tried to concentrate on the paper in front of him.  
Numbers, statistics, hard boiled facts.

It was a bit of a distraction, but not enough. After all he had read all this already a few hours ago.  
He knew those facts and numbers and statistics by heart. Just like he should, considering there was a board meeting the next morning and he had to present all those statistics and numbers again.

The difference this time was that someone new would be present.  
Doctor Reid Oliver.  
The neurosurgeon Luciano, his father Damian and Bob Hughes had hand-picked out of half a dozen of doctors fit to take charge of the new unit at Memorial Hospital.

Luciano wondered why this made him nervous.  
He had talked in front of so many important people in the past few years that one more presentation should hardly make a difference. But it did.

Luciano put down the file on the neurology unit and reached across his desk for a smaller file containing information gathered on one Reid Oliver.

Some of the numbers, facts and statistics in this file were attained on an official way. By reading medical journals of which Luciano hardly understood a word, by talking to other people who held importance in the world of brain surgery and the like.  
Some were taken from the application they had received once word had gotten around to Doctor Oliver about a hospital in the middle of nowhere building the country's most advanced neurological center, cutting edge and all that, and needed a doctor just as cutting edge to run it.

Another part of the file was less ... ethical.  
Information mostly acquired from people who didn't mind to let some supposedly confidential information slip if the right amount of money was offered. Information that could only be gotten by setting a private investigator or two on the candidate, as well as have some other people dig around in his life and the events of his past.

Those things Luciano couldn't discuss with Bob Hughes, but they were standard inquiries for people who were hired in a strategic position for a project backed by any member of the Grimaldi family.

Those parts of the file held things that sent shivers down Luciano’s spine.  
Shivers of fear, of excitement… of forbidden ideas and desires.  
He tried to ignore the inclinations and the effects they had on Luciano when he looked at the pictures in the file.

There was a portrait of Dr. Reid Oliver from the official application  
A man in his late thirties, sharp features, reddish blond, curly hair, steel blue eyes.  
His whole posture screamed of importance, of knowledge about how much of a genius he knew he was, of self-assurance.

A picture that had burned itself into Luciano’s head already.

And that was just the official picture.  
The Grimaldi employed privates investigators had supplied a few more.

Grainy pictures showing Dr. Oliver at work. Or grocery shopping. Or drinking coffee.

In those past days since getting those pictures Luciano couldn't take his eyes off them. He had to look at them. Again and again and again. Having them burn into his mind just as the official picture of the man.  
Luciano slapped the file shut.  
He looked longingly over to the dying embers of the fire. All it needed was one flick of his wrist and the pictures would be history. Would go up in flames and turn into ashes, that some member of the house staff would clean out before Luciano set foot into his office again.

But destroying the pictures wouldn’t make them unseen, and he would still have to deal with he man in person the next day.  
So Luciano just threw the file deep into the lowest drawer of his desk and locked it with his key before leaving the office and going upstairs to his room.


	2. Chapter 2

Dr. Reid Oliver had just unpacked a few of his things in his new office at Memorial Hospital when a knock sounded on his door.

“What?” he yelled.

The door opened and an attractive young man stepped into the room, making the dingy, windowless shoe box as bright as a ray of sunshine.  
He was a twenty-something, probably on the lower age range if Reid knew anything about young, pretty men. He had nicely build arms and bleached, blond hair going in all kinds of directions. Probably that bed-head look that actually took an hour to achieve.  
And the intriguing thing was that he didn't only look attractive but that he also set Reid’s gaydar through the roof.

“Who are you?” Reid’s cold exterior didn’t give away the sudden interest he had in the boy … man

“I’m Luciano Grimaldi”

“Ah,” Reid said, “one of the purses!”

Luciano’s brows went up and he cocked his head to the side in a way that fueled Reid’s interest further.

“Yes, I’m one of the donors for the new neurology wing and a board member of the hospital, if that's what you mean.”

“That's exactly what I mean, Mr. Grimaldi. Even through you have me wondering how a man of your age can be in such a position. What are you? Eighteen?”

“A bit older, not that it is really your business. As for your original question, I’m not the only one backing the wing. My father does most of it.”

“Ah, you’re a trust fund brat, not some guy who got rich by setting up an internet company and selling the bubble for millions”

“Yes, Dr. Oliver, I come from so called old money. But what’s your problem? Why is it important to you where the money that's offered comes from?”

“Well, I think, that those young dot thing millionaires at least had a good idea if they didn’t get their money by hard work. But that old money, inherited over generations … there really is nothing to it, except being born into the right cradle, rather than have the stork deliver you a couple of houses further down the street”

Slightly annoyed Luciano shook his head. “Can we start over, Dr. Oliver? I would like to officially welcome you to Oakdale in the name of the Grimaldi family”. With that the blond smiled at Reid.

“I feel officially welcomed, Mr. Grimaldi,” Reid answered dryly. “May I asked why you basically begged me to come to this town that time forgot to build a toy for myself? I’ve seen the building site of the new neuro wing, and it looks bigger than the rest of the hospital put together.”

“It will be,” Luciano said calmly. “I spent a lot of time in the hospital myself when I was younger. One thing or the other always happened that put me here, and I remember how hard it was on my parents. So I wanted to help and create a center where people will get the best of all. Top notch equipment and doctors, and a nice environment for the people supporting the patient, so they can take better care of their loved ones without having to worry about bad coffee or uncomfortable chairs”

“That’s overly sentimental. People will not survive a brain tumor just because the walls are painted in a pleasing color or their spouse has a comfortable chair to sit in”

“No, they want brilliant doctors, and that's where you will come into play. We wanted the best man for this job, and we got him“

“Yeah,“ Reid mumbled, “even if you possibly would have had to look for someone else if you told me up front how small this so-called town really is.”

“We aren’t that small!" Luciano said. “We have a collage, an airport and a shipping dock here in Oakdale.”

“You also have one coffee shop, one book store, one diner and one hotel.” Reid answered

“And still you came, even after we told you we couldn‘t work the word genius into your job title”

“Let’s not get all weepy about that. You did offer a insanely large salary and the possibility for me to design the perfect toy to play with. I guess for all that I can survive the small town surroundings. I can do a compromise like that, believe it or not.”

Luciano shrugged. “That‘s all we need”

“It just doesn’t make any sense”

“And you don’t like things that don’t make sense, don't you?”

“Look at you, being all clever!”

“Well, you do work with brains, so of course for you everything has to be all logic and sense. But don’t worry, I'm here to help you with all the other stuff.”

“How do you know I can’t do all the other stuff? The holding of patients hands, the talking to emotional parents, the drying of a lovers tears?”

“Because I talked to your former chief of staff. He warned us that you're a brilliant surgeon, but have a rather … unique bedside manner”

“Golly, at least you're not going to be too shocked once you find out that I make all the nurses cry, the interns hide and the orderlies quit!”

Luciano outright laughed and Reid stared intensely as his face became even more handsome

“So, Mr. Grimaldi..., why did you settle on a neurology wing, rather than something nice and cute? You mentioned parents, so why not a paediatrics ward for all those worried children and parents in need of help?”

Luciano laughed at Reid’s mix up of words, a rather good sign. There was hope that there was more than a pretty face to the rich kid.

“Or perhaps,” Reid continued, “someone in your family needs attention right now? Well, I can tell you that in this case you would probably have been better off just to come to my clinic in Dallas for a consult, as there’s the chance that they will be beyond repair before the unit here is fully functional if it is something urgent like a tumor.”

“Lovely image your are projecting there, Dr, Oliver,” Luciano said, “but we didn’t get the idea for the neurology unit because my family is in urgent need of it.“ His face gained some color as his explanation took up momentum.  
“I did some research before proposing this to the hospital's board. I first wanted to do the paediatrics ward, then I found out that there are already a few of those around, one as close as Chicago. All especially designed for the needs of the patients and the parents. But there isn’t a single one around for neurology. And I think a bit of comfort would be nice for people who have to worry about a doctor meddling around in the brain of someone they love. To you all that digging around in brains may be every-day business but most people find the thought quite scary.”

“So, I just got lucky to work in the right field,” Reid concluded, his own brain needing meddling as it supplied how Reid would love to get lucky with Mr. Snyder.

In the past Reid had set up a few rules about sleeping with people he worked with.  
Pharma representatives were fair game, even if he had no intention to fall for their sale strategies.  
Nurses, well, he didn’t sleep with them too often and only when they both clearly agreed to keep it to a fucking only thing.  
Interns and residents were usually off-limits, as were orderlies. It was a simple solution to make sure that no one was getting too cocky when he had to bark out orders or make someone cry.

Reid had once fucked the secretary of his chief of staff in Dallas.  
It had been a one-off thing after his boss had ordered Reid to attend a Christmas party. The secretary, supposedly a straight guy, had ended up pressing Reid up against a wall, fucking him hard enough that Reid could still feel it the next year.  
The week after the party said secretary stormed into Reid’s office and blamed it all on the booze. He also told Reid to never even dare to make a comment about him being anything but straight, straight, straight.

Of course that had just been the invitation Reid had needed to start dropping hints left and right, barely staying on this side of sexual harassment.  
He hated hypocrisy, and in this case it had just been too obvious that the guy hadn’t done it for the first time, and Reid would have betted his own brain that it wasn’t the last time either.

But Reid had never been in a situation where he wanted to drag a hospital donor off to bed. It screamed trouble and conflict of interest, but as he took another long look at Luciano Grimaldi and his dimpled smile, he wondered if it wouldn’t be worth it.

He shook his head clear of the motion as Mr. Grimaldi spoke again. “Yes,” he said, “you got lucky here. So if any other hospital calls and tries to lure you off with a better deal, just call me or my father, and we will try to at least match it.”

“So if there is a problem you're just throwing money at it?”

“Are we seriously back to that?“ Luciano asked, visibly getting upset. “I’m not going to apologize for my families money. Sure, it opens doors. But I take the responsibility serious to only use it to open doors to good causes. And you doctors are usually easy on that. You all can never get enough for your hospital units or clinics. So stop complaining, and come with me, we are going to be late for the meeting with the board.”

Luciano Grimaldi turned on his heels and walked out. Reid grinned to himself and made a mental note at how easy it was to rile the man up


	3. Chapter 3

As Reid tried to flee the conference room after his first meeting at Memorial in the hope to get condo shopping, a hand on his arm stopped him.

“Dr. Oliver,” Damian Grimaldi said with a smile. “Why don’t you join us for dinner tonight?”

Usually Reid would decline, pointing out that he was not interested in private chit-chat with donors, but seeing that the Grimaldis were willing to stuff a lot of money into Reid’s pockets without apparent reason, Reid agreed. Well, either it was the money that got him to agree or the smile on Luciano’s face as he came to stand next to his father.

He didn’t want to think too much about that decision.

The Grimaldis had promised Reid to send a car and Reid should have been more surprised than he was when he saw that they hadn’t just send any car to fetch him from the Lakeview hotel, but that it was a stretch limo. A white stretch limo of course.

Shaking his head about that much display of wealth Reid got in the car, and they drove off.  
He was sure that the front of the car arrived at Fairwinds when the back just left the parking lot of the hotel, as the ride to the so-called out of town estate was over rather quickly.

Reid kept rolling his eyes as he saw the house itself.  
It wasn’t just big, it was fucking huge and probably had a couple of post codes for the different parts of it.

Again he found the doors of both the car and the house opened for him, and a butler lead him to a drawing room

Luciano Grimaldi was already sitting in one of the chairs, reading a book. As he saw Reid enter, he placed it spine up on a table to his side and stood up.

“Good evening, Doctor Oliver,” he said with a smile, offering his hand. “I’m glad you could make it.”

First Reid scowled towards the offered hand but then he shook it anyway. “Mr. Grimaldi, I’m not sure as to why you wonder about that. Your father made it perfectly clear that he wouldn't accept no for an answer”

“Please call me Luciano. Mr. Grimaldi is my father!” Again that simile, and Reid was unable to snap back that he would keep calling him Mr. Grimaldi since that was his name, and he was not one to get cozy with the donors.

Reid mentally berated himself. He really needed to get his mind back under control. He was only in town for a day and he had already gone all hill-billy himself, falling for the first guy that pinged.

“Well then, Luciano, as you pointed out so wisely, no, I didn’t really want to come. But if you forgive me for being blunt, which you will have to do a lot if you want us to work together, your father seems like a guy who one does say no to and still be able to walk the next day”

Luciano only laughed out loud. “There were times when that would have happened, Dr. Oliver .. may I call you Reid?”

“No, you may not!” Reid said before he could think about it.

Luciano shrugged. “No problem Dr. Oliver. As to get back to the topic of my father, yes, the Grimaldi family had ties to organized crime, back a few years and across a few country borders.”

“Italy?” Reid asked

“No, Malta”

“Close enough”

“Yes, I got kidnapped when I was younger, so they could hurt my father. He has changed his life in the last few years. And he has helped me to change mine too.”

“Aren't you a little young to need life changing experiences?”

“You just keep asking for my age, don't you?, I’m twenty-two if you must know. And as I just said, I had a few traumatic experiences when I was younger. Some, like the kidnapping, were brought on to me by my family. Some I made for myself”

“Like?”

“You are indeed very blunt, Dr. Oliver. You don't even try to get to know me first." There was no anger in Luciano's voice, but rather a small smile, as he continued, "but it’s no secret anyway, you could probably ask the town florist and she could tell you pretty much all about my life story. I almost drank myself to death a few years ago and needed a kidney transplant.”

“Yes, now I see why you see yourself as a new man.”

“I am a new man, now. And that's mostly due to my father, Damian Grimaldi”

“You sound like you needed to point that out. Do you have another father?”

“Indeed I do. Damian hasn’t always lived in Oakdale. I grew up here with my mother and her husband, who adopted me. So yes, there's my father Damian and my father Holden. But in those past few years, it has been Damian who took great care of me when my adoptive father would have allowed me to keep making mistakes and ruining my life. Not because he wanted me to hurt myself but because he thought he would help me by not interfering.”

“That sounds pretty mysterious!”

Luciano smiled. “Forgive me for going on and on and on about stuff that is complicated. And you're a brain surgeon, not a shrink. So I shouldn't annoy you with my past”

“It’s better than doing small talk about the weather”

“And wasn’t it a sunny day?” Luciano asked with a mischievous grin.

Before Reid could determine if the young man was flirting with him, and if he should flirt back, Damian Grimaldi walked into the room from a side door.  
In his wake followed another young man. This one tall, broad shouldered, and with dark hair.

“Doctor Oliver,” Damian said, holding his arms out in welcome.

Reid didn‘t take the offered hug and just nodded his head. “Mr. Grimaldi”

“May I introduce my personal assistant?” Damian asked and gestured toward the brunette. “This is Noah Mayer”

***

Reid found himself on one side of the dinner table, across from Luciano and Noah, while Damian Grimaldi sat on the head.

“So, Doctor Oliver, have you found yourself a home yet?” Luciano asked over the rich, creamy soup.

“No, unfortunately, I haven’t !“ Reid answered. “This town doesn’t offer much living spaces to a single person, unless you want to live in a run down hole like a broken student.”

“Why don’t you get a house?” Damian asked. “They aren’t that expensive in Oakdale, and as I know, you get a rather generous salary, even for someone in your field.”

“I don’t see why I should get a house fit for a family when I spend most of my days, and a fair amount of my nights, at the hospital. All I need is a bed, a huge TV and an even larger fridge. I don’t need a twenty bedroom mansion with it’s own golf course like you probably have here.”

“We don’t have a golf course,“ Luciano said, “just a tennis court and a pool.”

“I play neither golf nor tennis,” Reid mentioned, cutting Luciano off before he could invite him to come and play.

“A doctor who doesn't play golf or tennis?” Noah asked surprised.

“I’m too busy saving lives!”

“That is great to hear,” Damian said, “it’s always nice to see the specialists do more than just try to lower their handicap and ask for more money, while they only work a day a week on healing their patients.”

“I totally agree with you, Mr. Grimaldi.” Reid smirked. “But I really hope to find a new living arrangement soon as I also dislike hotels.”

“And what is wrong with hotels? Especially the Lakeview?” Noah asked again. “They have comfortable beds, a good breakfast buffet and nice staff. “

“You must know that Noah was a permanent resident there while he was finishing college,” Luciano explained while putting a hand to Noah’s back. "So you must forgive him, if he sounds territorial, when someone voices dislike towards the Lakeview."

“A student who could afford living at a hotel? Are you from a rich background too, Mr. Mayer?”

“No,” Noah shook his head, “I have an army background. I got to stay there because of Luke.”

“My mother is one of the owners of the Lakeview,” Luciano explained. “She likes Noah!”

“Ah, nepotism at its finest!” Reid said, while he noted how Luciano’s eyes had lid up when talking and touching Noah.

While Reid cut into his steak he kept his eyes on the two men across from him. There was an unmistakable bond between Noah and Luciano. Reid was sure they were more than just two young men working together, that they were even more than friends. Reid kept trying to point down what it was.

Noah didn’t ping Reid quite as intense as Luciano did, but that didn’t make him straight by default.  
Where they casually involved? Or perhaps in the blooming stages of new love?

Reid had to fight down his mouthful of potatoes. He knew that nauseating feeling in his gut. Jealousy. He hadn’t felt it in years but here it was again. Unwelcomed.

He only knew Luciano Grimaldi for a day, but laying eyes on him once or twice had been enough. Reid was attracted to the guy, and he didn’t know how he would react if he found out that Luciano and Noah had just started something and he was just a couple of days late to the party.  
It would be much better if those two had something going on for much longer. Perhaps hiding their relationship right under daddy's nose, because Grimaldi senior didn’t approve of his son getting up close and personal with someone out of his league.

Reid shook his head in an attempt to clear his mind. This was the wrong time to daydream about consoling Luciano in the case that his father found out and kicked Noah across the universe.  
“Aren’t the potatoes to your liking?” Luciano asked, sending Reid a smile across the table.

“No, they are fine!” Reid answered, digging into them renewed favor. “My mind just wandered off to my living situation again.”

“Didn’t Katie say she needs a new roommate?” Noah asked Luciano.

“Katie?” Reid asked. “Another relative of yours? What does she own in this place? The store at the bus station? The local ice rink?”

Luciano laughed. “She’s a TV host at the local station. And indeed, she is a relative of mine … sort of, by marriage and adoption. How did you know?”

“Lucky guess!” Reid said,” and I won’t give you the pleasure of me asking for details about the marriage and adoption relation”

Reid swallowed dryly as Luciano laughed again and stroked back a strand of hair that was falling over his glittering eyes.

“But yes,” Luciano continued, “Katie said she needed a roommate. Perhaps if you got some free time in the next few days I can bring you to her place, Dr. Oliver”

“Make that tomorrow if possible!”

“Wow, you really don’t like hotels at all.” Noah piped in again, while putting a hand on Luciano’s wrist.

“No, all I can think of are the dozens of disgusting people who slept in the same bed before me, drooling during the night, and having gems seep deep into the pillows.” Reid gave a visible shudder, and everyone else at the table laughed.  
“I don’t think the members of the hospital board would be too happy either if I asked them to move into the Lakeview for a couple of weeks so I could move into their until I found a place to stay.. So I hope that I will come to an agreement with this Katie person.”

“I think you will,” Luciano said. “She’s really friendly and a good person. And should things not work out with her you could always come and stay here at Fairwinds for a while. Or would that be a problem, dad?”

“Absolutely not, my son! We do have those twenty odd bedrooms for a reason after all.” Damian smirked into the direction of Reid, “if only to keep the new genius in town happy”

Reid nodded at Damian with a smirk of his own. He had to give it to the man ,he, as well s his son, could hold his own. But that didn’t mean Reid really wanted to move in with them. Not even if it meant getting closer to Luciano while Noah wasn’t around.

***  
Between dinner and desert Damian Grimaldi asked Reid to come follow him into his home office.

“Dr. Oliver, I am very glad you came tonight.” Damian said as he offered Reid a glass of whisky.

Reid took it and sat down as offered on the big, green sofa by the huge window. “I have a feeling that you want to talk business now,” he said, looking at Damian who had taken a seat on a matching chair opposite him

“You are an intelligent man, doctor Oliver,” he said, raising his own drink to take a sip

“Well, Mr. Grimaldi, make me whatever offer you have in mind, and we‘ll see.”

“It’s not really an offer I have to make,” Damian started, “more of something you should be aware off.”

“Do you play hospital politics, Doctor Oliver?”

“Only if I can‘t prevent it.”

“You will have to, sooner or later. Perhaps even more than you would have to in a big city hospital, like the one you worked in in Dallas. You must know, here in Oakdale we all know one another. Everyone on the hospital board has worked for or against each other, on this board or another, for a business they own or have interest in. It’s often tit for tat, and personal likes and dislikes can get in the way of business as petty private misunderstandings get taken out at board meetings.”

Reid sighted, and Damian smiled at him.

“Exactly, Doctor Oliver. I think it is fair to warn you that considered that you came to Oakdale thanks to a project that is sponsored by the Grimaldi Shipping operation, there will be a few people who will work against you just because they want to work against me.”

Damian took another sip of his drink. “Lucinda Walsh for one. She’s a very tough business woman in her own right, but she is dead set against our new neurology unit. She wanted to either have the project devoted to cardiology because her husband works in the field or for general medicine. Why? Because Luciano and I want it to be a neurology wing!”

“What have you done to her that she doesn’t like you? “ Reid asked. “Knocked up her daughter?”

“Precisely!” Damian smirked as he saw the look on the doctor’s face as the sarcastic comment backfired. “Lucinda’s daughter Lily is Luciano’s mother. So it’s been a while”

Reid nodded

“But that is not the reason she has problems with me this time. This time she is angry at me because of Luciano. You must know I had to be absent from his life for a while and when I came back, he and his family had a rough time. Especially things with his mother were … let us say, they were strained.  
My reappearance in my son’s life has given him a new perspective and while he didn’t directly turn his back to his mother and her husband, he has become estranged from them and come to live and work with me. They as well as Lucinda don’t like that too much as they think I am a bad influence on Luciano”

“You realize that I did some research once I learned about who was responsible for hiring me?” Reid asked.

“As we have done on you”

“I didn’t doubt that,” Reid answered calmly. “And from what I learned, Luciano’s mother and her family may have reason to mistrust you. Some of the dealings you and your family are involved in ... sounded a bit shady from what one can learn from the internet”

Damian nodded. “I made some mistakes, Dr. Oliver,” he said, just as level, reaching out to fill both their glasses again. “They almost cost me my son. I would do everything for Luciano, to make sure he has the best life possible. For him I would do some shady things again. But doing those in general have hurt him, and me and our bond in the past, so I see to avoid them as much as possible these days. For Luciano”

“And why are you telling me this? And by that basically admitting to a stranger that you have connections to the mob?”

“Because I can’t shake my past off completely. There may be times when I need your medical experience... off the records!”

“I don’t plan to lose my license because of a neuro wing. One would be pretty useless without the other”

”It won’t come to that,” Damian promised. “I’m pretty sure it will hardly ever matter, I just want to make sure that you know that one day, maybe in a year, maybe in five or ten, a sensible request for help may come”

“And what am I getting out of this?” Reid asked. He hated to admit to himself that he was slightly intrigued.

“Financial backing for all your needs. All the toys you can think of for your wing ... For, let’s say, the next five years at least.” Damian paused to smile at Reid. “And my support on the board. And where my support is Luciano’s support usually goes as well. That means you already have two out of seven votes, for whatever you plan, Doctor Oliver. And with that we can make sure that you don’t have to play the hospital politics you hate so much. I will be on your back, and take over that part for you”

He held out his hand and Reid took it. It was a deal.

 

***

“What are you doing Luke?” Noah asked as the two where left alone.

“What do you mean?” Luciano asked with a frown.

“You know what I mean. I meant the way you look at this Doctor Oliver. You were flirting with him during the whole dinner.”

“I wasn‘t! “ Luciano said in an attempt to reassure himself as well as Noah.

“No, Luke, you were, You were smiling across the table at him the whole time, and then on top of it you started to play with your hair. That‘s flirting.”

“Oh!” Luciano said, real surprise in his voice. “I didn’t mean too flirt with him. You know that, don‘t you?” Luciano put his face in his hands. “I guess I do find him attractive,“ he finally admitted.

Noh’s hand reached out to Luciano’s back. This time it was him, offering comforting touches.

“It is bound to happen,” he said. “You just have to admit to it, and it will pass. “

“You’re right! I am attracted to him, and now that I know that I am in danger of flirting with him, I just have to be more careful, so it won‘t happen again.”

“Just relax, and remember, I’m here for you Luke.“ Noah said, and gave Luciano’s back a pat. “I just tell you when I notice it again, and together we can take care, and then your attraction to the good doctor will pass over in no time at all.”

“It’s so good to have you Noah. I ‘m happy to know that you take so good care of me”

He reached out and pulled Noah in a hug. Noah returned it. “No problem Luke, I’m always here for you”

As they parted the a door behind them opened and Damian and Reid returned to the drawing room.

Reid tried to ignore the two young men stepping back from each other .Additionally he tried to put his attraction for Luciano in a deep, dark corner of his mind and his heart in the hope he could ignore it as well in the future.

“So!” Damian said, “are we all ready for coffee and cake?””

Before anyone would answer there was loud commotion coming from the hall, before the door flew open as two dark haired women stormed into the drawing room.

Reid watched the three other men reacted to their entrance.

Damien smiled non-committal, Noah had a big beam for them and Luciano put a business like smile on his face that looked a bit forced, as if he would prefer to frown.

“Maddie! Zoe!” Damian welcomed them. “You are just in time for dessert!”

Reid watched in surprise as the cute, seemingly younger girl hurried over to fling her arms around Noah, bringing the tall man down to kiss him soundly on his lips.

Damian turned to Reid. “Dr. Oliver, may I introduce you to Maddie Mayer, Noah’s wife.” Then he pointed to the other, slightly exotic looking woman who had moved to stand closer to Luciano, “and Zoe Finn, my son’s fiancée”


	4. Chapter 4

It was around mid-day when Luciano showed up at Reid office the next day, offering to take him to lunch before meeting Katie Snyder about the room.

Luciano brought them to Al’s, since Reid didn’t have the chance so far to check it out

“So, what’s good here?” he asked while looking over the menu.

Luciano smiled at him over the table.

“Everything”

“That doesn’t make the choice easier” Reid answered dryly .

In the end he settled for the chili with and an extra helping of a burger and fires.

“What? “ he asked as he felt Luciano staring at him. “I might still grow!”

“Only sideways!” Luciano said teasingly.

“Nah, hasn’t happened yet, and even if, there are worse things than some love handles.”

“Why the blush, Mr. Grimaldi?” Reid asked as he noticed how Luciano’s cheeks had grown darker. “Are you already having them?”

“Ehm,…no!” Luciano said before hurryingly reaching for his glass of coke and jugging down a few huge gulps.

“Are you afraid of getting them?” Reid couldn’t stop himself from asking. “Would Miss Zoe leave you because of them? Does she have a pre-nup set up stating that you always have to keep your charming boyish looks or she is allowed to divorce you and run away with the stable boy and three quarters of your trust fund?”

Luciano laughed. “No, we don’t have a pre-nup like that. My fathers lawyers are still working on one as it will most likely be his money on the line”

Reid looked at him quizzically.

“Oh, yeah, right, you don’t know…” Luciano paused as their food was served. Then continued once they were alone at the table again.

“Zoe and her twin brother, Zac, showed up here in Oakdale a couple of years ago, searching for us. They are distant relatives. Their mother was an illegitimate Grimaldi and so are they. They didn’t even know until then how rich and powerful the family is.  
Once father found out, he made sure to bring them back to the Grimaldi family as best as he could.  
Put Zac back into school and now he’s working his way up in one of the Grimaldi businesses as a lawyer.  
Zoe stayed here in Oakdale, and started working with Damian and me in the shipping business. She’s one hell of a business woman,. We are very proud of her… well, her and her brother.  
But the main part of the family still have reservations about the twins. Don’t really want them let in on most of the family stuff.  
If … when I marry Zoe our children will be real Grimaldis and accepted by the family, and that’s all Zac and Zoe really want.”

Reid noted that Luciano had used some strange phrasing while he hadn’t said a word about love, and decided to go digging.

“So am I getting this right? “ he asked. “You met your long lost, distant cousin a few years ago, and she became involved with your fathers business? And now you are happy and getting married, and on top of all that, you have the bonus that her line will be accepted back into the main Grimaldi family? How lucky that the two of you fell in love so all that could happen”

Luciano blushed an even deeper crimson than when they were talking about love handles. “Yeah, lucky, isn’t it?” he hurried to say, not looking Reid into the eyes.

Reid decided to let it go for now and put all his attention back to his almost empty plate. Something smelled fishy here, and it wasn’t the smoked salmon in the booth next to them.  
Reid knew that his gaydar was finely tuned and had never let him down in the past decades. He was pretty sure that his instincts didn’t fail him now with one Luciano Grimaldi either.

There was nothing wrong about Luciano not telling him everything. After all they knew each other for all of two days, and the man had already worn his heart on his sleeve and told Reid more than Reid would have wanted to know. Well, at least more than he would have wanted to know about everyone else.   
There was just something about this guy that had Reid’s brain scrambled, and was still trying to figure out how to deal with that.

***

After lunch Luciano brought Reid over to Katie Snyder’s place

She had a nice house just out on the town borders. Reid tried to show himself from his best side, but his face fell the moment he looked at her baby.

“You didn’t warn me about the screaming infant!” he said to Luciano.

“Sorry,” Luciano said. “For all of us it’s just normal to think of Katie as Jacob’s mother, so I didn’t really think I should have to mention him especially.”

“What’s wrong with my son?” Katie asked, her smile just as forced as Reid’s

“The drooling, the germ breeding! “ Reid made a freaked out face.

“Don’t worry,” Katie said. “You don’t have to touch him, unless you want to.”

“How old is he?”

“Soon a year”

“Then there’s that problem. He will start walking soon and then I don’t have much choice about the touching, because he will just come over and have his jam and drool smeared little paws all over me”

Katie broke out in down right laughter.

”So, you have your hands elbow deep in brains every day, but you freak out about being touched by a baby? I think you have clean freak issues, Doctor.”

Reid looked earnestly at her. “What can I say, I am unique”

“I can tell,” she answered. “You sure you can’t handle the toddler? Because I think it would be fun to have you around, strange quirks and all”

“And you haven’t even seen him eating now,” Luciano interjected.

“That bad?” Katie asked

“Worse!” Luciano answered. “I’ve only seen him eat twice now, but both times I was thinking I ended up in an after-Lamaze snack hour”

Katie laughed and looked Reid over once more. “He doesn’t look pregnant!” she said

“And he’s standing right here and can hear you,” Reid pointed out, but the others didn’t seem to notice him.

“He claims not to have any love handles so far, but he wouldn’t mind if he got them. Perhaps you can verify that, once you see him stumble out of the shower one morning”

“My my, considering you two only met you already had some strange conversations”

“And they are only getting stranger!” Reid mumbled to himself.

Finally Luciano turned to Reid again. “Well, Doctor Oliver. You can deal with Jacob and his grabby baby hands or with the germ infested Lakeview.”

Reid looked at the young boy in Katie’s arms and sighed heavily

“I guess the germ breeder I know is better than dealing with the legions of unknowns at the hotel.” he finally said.

“Or you could come and move in at Fairwinds, “ Luciano said. “The offer still stands”

“Sorry, Mr. Grimaldi, but no can do. I can’t live in a place where I would get lost without a map if I got an emergency page in the middle of the night.”

Luciano chuckled. “Whatever, Doctor”

“Great!” Katie beamed at him. “Why don’t we sit down and talk about the details then”

“Great!”

“Will you guys mind if I go?” Luciano asked. “I have to meet up with Noah at Grimaldi”

 

***

“I’m fucked!” Luciano declared as he fell into a chair in Noah’s office

“Nice to see you too!“ the other man said without looking up from his files.

“Seriously Noah, I’m really fucked with this situation with Doctor Oliver”

Noah sighed and put his files away, got up and stepped around his desk, so he came to stand at Luciano’s side

“What happened?” he asked

“Like I promised him last night, I introduced him to Katie. But first we had lunch. And I made a comment about his food choices that lead to us talking about our bodies and all I could think of for the rest of the meal was that I would want to see him with his shirt off.”

“You just want to see him with his shirt off?” Noah asked seriously.

“No,” Luciano said with a frown. “I want to touch him too when he got his shirt off.”

“I figured as much.”

Noah put an arm around Luciano’s’ shoulder. “You need to fight it, Luke. You need to get over this. I know, it’s hard but you need to concentrate on how much better your life will be when you don’t let those ideas about men mess you up.”

“I know, but it’s hard again. I didn’t have problems in the last few years. Not since the mess with Kevin. But that solved itself after he found out where I spent my summer”

“Well, good riddance of that asshole. Calling you a stupid faggot even after you spent all that time to get better and went to Kreeger Camp.”

“Well, “ Luciano said. “I lost my best friend that summer, but I found another. One who understands me, who is in the same boat.” He smiled at Noah.

“And we are both better off for it,” Noah said. “But don’t think I don’t realize that you are trying to chance the subject.”

“Yeah,” The smile vanished from Luciano’s face.

“Tell me more!” Noah tried to prompted him into talking.

“It started when I got the file from his application. The picture that he sent with it. They all say a picture shouldn’t hold weight in a job application, least for a job like this. And that is true, you don’t need to be pretty to be a good surgeon. But Noah, the way his blue eyes were shining so intensely out of that one portrait … “

“It affected you!” Noah said knowingly

“Yeah, and badly”

“Have you acted on it?”

“Well, you said yourself yesterday, I have been staring at him. Possibly undressing him with my eyes”

“That’s not what I am asking, Luke”

Luciano took a deep breath. “ I know,” he said, “and if you really must know, no, not really”

“Not really?”

Luciano usually loved how Noah could keep his mind straight - in all ways - but right now his inquires were a bit too spot on for Luciano’s liking.

“No, I haven’t touched myself while thinking of him… He may have slipped into my mind, but I did my best to catch myself if I drifted off into that direction.”

“What did you try to think about instead?”

“Do you really have to know?”

“Luke, I don’t really like to hear the details, but yes, I have to hear, because you need to tell them. Remember, that is how we learned to handle it. The more we admit about being tempted to each other the more we can help each other to stay on the right path”

”I try not to think about anyone… “

“Not even Zoe?”

“You know that Zoe and me never ...”

“Perhaps you should change that Luke”

Luciano shrugged. “ I like her. I love that I can help her and Zac to find their way back into the family, to become accepted”

“You have to try harder, Luke,” Noah said. “Spent some more time with Zoe, do something romantic perhaps. And than try to get closer to her. I’m sure she would like that.” Noah paused for a moment, and Luciano could see that he was debating with himself.  
“I’m not sure if I should tell you this,” Noah said after all. “But Zoe has said as much to Maddie. She’s frustrated that you haven’t moved on further with her. That you don’t even try to kiss her most of the time. That the last time you did was when Damian held that engagement party for you guys”

Luciano sighed. “Can we at least start out with some kind of double date? I really don’t know what to do with Zoe when we are alone and supposed to be romantic. I always talk crap”

“One double date!” Noah said sternly, “after that, you are on your own”

“Thank you”

“And Luke, one more thing!”

“That would be?”

“You have to tell him”

Luciano groaned

“Ross told us we have to do it if things get too bad. We have to tell the guys we feel attracted to that we have problems and feelings.”

“I really don’t see why I should tell him. We still have to work together. What happens if he reacts the same way Kevin did?”

“Kevin was a stupid jock. I’m sure the doctor will not react like that, especially if you tell him that you are working on your homosexual attractions.” He paused and looked at Luciano. “And then he will tell you too that it isn’t not normal for a man to want another man. I’m sure he will give you a piece of his mind, he seems the type”

“Yeah, you are right. At least he’s a surgeon and will need to protect his hands, so I don’t have to fear that he will hit me because of it. I will tell him if the next time I see him I still feel affected by him”


	5. Chapter 5

Two days later Luciano walked into Doctor Oliver’s office, his arms full of blue prints for the neuro wing.

“Mr. Grimaldi, will there be any day when I don’t have to deal with you?” Reid asked with raised eyebrows.

“You didn’t see me yesterday” Luciano answered

“And what a wonderful day it was.”

“Did you move in with Katie yet?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Yay, no more germs for the Doctor!” Luciano teased

Reid tried to hide his smile by ducking his head, but it was a fruitless effort.

“Good golly almighty, he can smile!” Luciano found himself unable to stop the next words. “And what a pretty smile it is”

“Excuse me?” Reid asked as he looked surprised at Luciano.

The younger man blushed under the look and Reid couldn’t take his eyes off of him.

“Ehm… there is something I have to tell you, ” Luciano said, shyly looking down at the floor.

“And what would that be, Mr. Grimaldi?” Reid asked, intrigued like hell from the sudden self conscious display in front of him.

“Well, I have a problem… or had a problem… it’s really hard to say if I still have it or if it’s past.. The experts are not sure themselves, but I think it’s an ongoing condition… so well.. I like to go with that...”

“Does this condition have anything to do with having a motor mouth and not finishing sentences?” Reid interrupted him

“I’m sorry, I was blabbering, but ... , it’s not easy to tell… but I have to tell you…that is how I learned to deal with it… because only if I admit that I have a problem, I can start getting better… and get over it. “

“Are you in AA? Because that sound’s a lot like them”

“Yes, I am in the AA too, but what I have to tell you now has nothing to do with my drinking problem. But now that you made the connection about what they say in the AA and what they told me in the camp I was in for my other problem, I see the point. If they both tell us to share, then sharing must be the way to go. Help you to get rid of the things that make your life dangerous.”

“Not that I particularly want to hear what you have to share but can we get to the sharing part already? The suspense here is killing me.”

Luciano looked up at Reid, who looked rather bored.

“I’m sorry, I’m just really nervous…because the last time I told someone.. it didn’t end well. But as I probably already said, I have to tell you, Mostly because my problem surfaced since I first meet you a few days ago”

Reid kept looking at him expectantly.

“Like I said, I find your smile pretty. And your hands. I find you eyes mesmerizing, and your hair… well, I am attracted to you … just please, don’t hit me!”

“I don’t hit people when I can avoid it, Mr. Grimaldi,” Reid said with a frown. “I have to protect my hands. Aside from that, what are you trying to tell me? That you are gay? Big shock!”

“What?“ Luciano’s eyes went big. “Is it that obvious? What gave it away? My hands? My posture? The way I walk?” his voice went higher and higher in panic.

“Calm down Mr. Grimaldi, it is not that obvious. I just have a knack with knowing, but I’m sure every one else you meet for the first time will not see it right away, and even if,” Reid shrugged, “who cares that you are gay?”

“I’m not gay!” Luciano said determinedly, “I thought I was gay, when I was younger, but as I just told you, I realized that I was wrong, and I’m now working on my problems, I’m ex-gay if you have to give me a title.”

Reid had a problem too as he was almost chocking on his suppressed laughter. He wouldn’t care to hold it back under normal circumstances but the way Luciano Grimaldi stood in front of him made him at least try.

The man … no, right now he was a boy, was really a true ex-gay- shit believer. Reid never really had the displeasure of meeting one of them face to face before.  
But now it all made sense. The fiancée Luciano didn‘t look too happy about, the confusing interactions with Mr. Mayer… but it didn’t explain the longing glances he still sent in Reid’s direction ever so often.

“Are you sure about the ex thing?” Reid asked

“Yeah… yeah! “ Luciano hurried to say, “you don’t have to fear that I will try coming onto you or something like that. I‘m really working at becoming normal and not act on this unnatural desires .”

“Tell me, Mr. Grimaldi, why did you tell me all that?”

“Well, as I said, they say you should tell it to a man if you find yourself attracted to him and might develop feelings for him. If it is out in the open … well, he will most likely tell you how sick you are, and that it just isn’t normal and he will take care to remind you whenever he sees that you might be looking at him strangely, or say inappropriate things, like I just did when I told you how pretty I think your smile is and …”

Luciano suddenly stopped his avalanche of words when he saw how Reid had gotten up from his chair and slowly came towards him, his long, elegant fingers caressing the dark wood of his desk as he stepped round it.

“Sounds logical,” Reid said as he came closer and closer. “At least if you are looking at it from the point of a person who thinks that homosexuality is wrong. That every man who has feelings for another is mislead and should feel ashamed of himself”

Luciano nodded, not quite sure where Doctor Oliver was going with this.

“But what happens if you tell all this to someone who doesn't think that it is wrong?” Reid asked as he came to a halt just inches away from Luciano. “You know that they stopped classifying homosexuality as a mental illness a couple of decades ago?”

“Well…” suddenly Luciano seemed to be out of words, his hands fidgeting. “I’m not saying that this is wrong…”

“But the people who told you how to get over your desires, they would like to see the old times and practices restored, don‘t they? They would like to bring back all the useless medication, the electroshock therapy, the lobotomies. Everything that has even the slightest chance of ridding young men like you of the illness.”

“Some of them would like that, yeah. As would some of us… patients, for lack of a better word”

Reid tried to fight down the anger he felt towards those headcases who made young people like Luciano feel like there was something wrong with them. He mentally counted to ten, before he returned all his attention to the young man in front of him.

“Now let us go even a step further, Luciano,” he said, reaching out for Luciano’s face and tipping it up by the chin so he could look deeply into his eyes. “How are you supposed to react when you find out that you told a gay man that you feel attracted to him and he tells you that the feeling is mutual? Did they teach you that?”

Luciano’s mouth opened in a silent, surprised gasp, and Reid used to moment to suck Luciano’s plump bottom lip between his own.


	6. Chapter 6

“I told Doctor Oliver that I am attracted to him!”

“That’s a good thing,” Noah said. “He didn’t’t react like Kevin, or did he?”

“No,” Luciano said, “his reaction was completely different from Kevin‘s. He kissed me!”

“He did what?” Noah almost yelled as he jumped up from his chair.

“He! Kissed! Me!” Luciano repeated.

“But why?”

“Because from what I gathered he’s gay, attracted to me too and not ashamed of it”

“Oh fuck! Just what we need to keep you on track.” Noah stood up and went over to stand in front of Luciano. “Luke, just don’t do anything stupid!” he said as he put his hands on Luciano’s shoulders, slightly shaking him.

“I don’t plan to”

“How did you react to the kiss?”

Luciano blushed. “I was surprised at first. Well, I was surprised before he even kissed me, when he just stood in front of me and asked me what they told me at camp how to react when I find out that I told a gay man that I am attracted to him. My speechlessness on that kind of opened up the opportunity for him to kiss me at all.”

“So it was just a little peck, right? Something that you could file away under being overly friendly?”

“Not really!” Luciano looked down at his hands. “It kind of involved a bit of tongue”

“Tell me that at least you didn’t return the kiss”

“And if I did?”

Noah groaned.

“I didn’t want it to happen.” Luciano tried to explain himself. “It was just such a surprise. First him telling me that he’s gay, and that he’s attracted to me too, and then just having his tongue pressing into my mouth. I just couldn’t help myself. If felt great. Definitely better than any kiss I ever shared with Zoe.”

“That’s just because you don’t kiss Zoe often enough!” Noah chided him. “So, how long did this that kiss last before you ended it?”

“I don’t know, a few seconds, perhaps even a minute or so. And I didn’t end it, it was Doctor Oliver who stopped as suddenly as he started it”

“Oh no, no no no no…,” Noah pulled at his hair. “ You realize just how wrong that all is, do you Luke? You weren’t supposed to kiss him back, you were supposed to push him back, get him away from you as soon as you realized that he was about to kiss you, even better when you realized, that he was stepping closer, that he wasn’t taking you seriously when you told him that you choose not to consider a homosexual lifestyle. He can do what he wants with his life, but he has not right to suck you back into something that is not healthy for you.

“I know, I know, I know!” Luciano said while shoving Noah away from himself. “You don’t have to make this harder on me than it already is. I know it was a mistake. I know it didn’t work out as it should have, I know that I fucked it up!”

“You may know it, but still, you did nothing to prevent it Luke. You did nothing to stop it, and let’s be honest, you said yourself, that deep down you enjoyed it.”

Luciano opened his mouth, but Noah didn’t let him speak

“Tell me, did you provoke him into kissing you? Did you bat your eyelashes at him? Lick your lips provocatively? Cock your head? Touch him when it wasn’t necessary?”

Luciano shook his head vehemently

“Be honest, Luke? Did you? Did you sway your hips when walking away from him?”

“No no, no, I didn’t, I didn’t. I had no idea that he could be gay! “ Luciano was all but screaming now  
“I did nothing that could have be seen as an invitation, as a provocation, I did not want him to kiss me!”

Noah sighed and let go of his anger, sitting back down in his desk chair. “When did that kiss between you and Doctor Oliver happen?” he asked after regaining some calm.

“Just before I got here”

“Then why are you here in my office and not down the hall with Zoe? Kissing her, asking her out for that date we talked about? You really have to actively work on your relationship with her. Even more so now that you slipped and kissed a guy.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes Luke, I really think so, and you know that you have to do it. Now! Go to her and show her some affection and attention. Kiss her. Forget the Doctor. Don’t let him be the last person you tasted or who you enjoyed being close to”

Grumpily Luciano left Noah’s office, and went down the hall to knock on Zoe’s door.

“Hey there,” he greeted her as he stepped inside.

She looked up from her work

”Luciano!” she said with a smile. “What brings you down this musty hallway?”

“Musty?” he asked “Perhaps you should talk to father, so he can send the cleaning crew down here more often”

“Oh Luciano, the hallway is fine, it does get cleaned every day. It’s just a saying, because you don’t show up here all that often. Sometimes it feels almost like you don’t want to see me.”

“It’s not like that Zoe. I’m just really busy with work, and the new neuro wing,” Luciano stepped closer to her desk, and stood behind her. He put his arms around her shoulder and hugged her from the back.

“I’m sorry, if it looks like I don’t like you”

“Like?”

“Yeah Zoe, I like you, I like you a lot.”

“Luciano, we are about to get married, you should more than just like me”

“I know, but I was never in love. I don’t even know if I can fall in love with anyone. But I hope I can come to love you over time. That is why I want to get married to you.”

“Are you sure that is the reason Luciano?” she looked over her shoulder at him. “I’m fine if you only want to have the child and then split up with me again if you still want Noah”

“Zoe! You know there is nothing going on between me and Noah”

“Are you sure? That time I walked in on the two of you…”

“It was just one kiss, it didn’t mean anything”

“Didn’t look like that to me”

“So we drank a bit too much…”

“Which you shouldn’t do at all!”

“Why is everybody pissy at me today? Why can‘t I do anything right?“ Luciano let go of Zoe and took a couple of steps back.

“Who else complained about you today?”

“Noah”

“Why?”

“Because I made one of my usual stupid mistakes!”

“Oh Luciano, you are such a mess”

“Yeah, yeah, I know! “ He frowned at her. “I came here in the hope to make you happy. I wanted to invite you to a date tonight. The two of us. Perhaps with Noah and Maddie too”

“Why the double date?

“You know I am not very good with all the romantic stuff, and I am more comfortable if I’m not the only one around making an ass out of myself”

Zoe stood up and closed the distance between them again, then put her arms around his neck. “ You’re an adorable ass when you try to make me happy”

Luciano put his hands on her cheeks and with two fingers caressed Zoe’s hair.

“I’m trying to do better, I really am. I want to see you happy, I want us to have a happy, cute little family. You, me and a baby. Or more than one baby, and perhaps a cat or a dog too. Whatever you prefer.”

“So we’re going out tonight?” Zoe asked

“Yeah, and if you want we can even go alone”

”I would like that, but I know that you would get really uncomfortable. It’s ok if we go with Maddie and Noah. Have some fun with them.”

“We can still be alone later,” Luciano offered. “Getting a little closer, just the two of us when we get home.”

“My my, Luciano!” Zoe said with a smile on her face. “That’s quite the offer from Mr. I-am-not-ready- yet”

“I was thinking that maybe I will never be ready. But I’m willing to take a chance and just jump in and do it. Perhaps that is all I need”

“I can give you some encouragement!” Zoe tucked her hair behind her ear and closed the remaining distance between her and Luciano. She smiled up at him as she put her hand on the back of his head guiding him closer.

“Kiss me, Luciano”

And he did.


	7. Chapter 7

When Noah and Maddie came to Fairwinds that evening, Noah found Luciano in his room, getting ready.

He opened his bag and pulled out a box made out of dark wood and red velvet.

“What’s this? Luciano asked.

“It’s a temptation box,” Noah said.

“What’s that?”

“I did some research, and I think this will help you with your problems.”

“You are not doing research on helping me getting Zoe into bed, are you?”

“Luke, what do you think of me? I would never do something like that. You have to figure that out for yourself.”

“Easy for you to say.”

“Come on Luke, just get that first time behind you. It will get easier after that. A lot of guys manage it at fifteen, your almost twenty five and you still haven’t managed to sleep with a woman, how sad is that?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, just remind me how much I am sucking at al of this. I am sure that will help me to do it right!”

“Gee, no reason to get pissy at me. I just think that you are making it harder on yourself, building up more pressure the longer you wait. Just get it behind you, and after that it will all be more relaxed. For you and for Zoe. And anyway, Zoe isn’t a virgin anymore, she can help you through that stuff. Show you how it is done.”

“Do you have to keep rubbing it in? Not everyone was pressured into having sex by their parents.  
I didn’t grow up on an army base. My parents got me a car when I turned sixteen, not a hooker.”

“That’s not how my first time happened either, and you know it. And what did stop you all this years to just find yourself a girl? What about Jade? Or about Maddie? You knew her long before I came into the picture, even took her to prom. You could have tried to get it on with her that night, like all the guys do at prom night!”

“Are you listening to yourself, Noah? Are you seriously just pimping out your own wife?”

Noah pretended that he hadn’t heard Luciano and just kept talking. “Or if there wasn’t a girl in Oakdale you wanted to do, then why didn’t you go to Chicago and found yourself a piece of ass there? Or just like you said, get a hooker? You do have the money for it, even to get a girl for a whole night and try that romantic approach to sex, you seem so obsessed with.”

Luciano stared at Noah, his mouth having dropped open. As Noah ended his rant, Luciano answered with the first words that came to him: “I just think it will be better if it is romantic!”

“You don’t need to be romantic the first time. A good woman will forgive you the first time. It’s always lame. But you need to get it behind you so you can become better.”

“So was that how you did it with all those girls you slept with? You just got it behind you? Its that how it still is every time you are sleeping with Maddie?”

“We are not talking about me, Luke! So, about this temptation box here…”

“Yes, we are talking about you now! You want to hear every little detail about me and Zoe, and now about Doctor Oliver too. But every time I ask you something, you just refuse to say anything. How am I supposed to know how to do things right if you are not sharing your experiences with me?”

Noah was saved from having to answer as Maddie came into the room just at this moment. “Hey sweetie!” Noah pulled her into a hug, and gave her a peck on the lips

“So, what are you guys talking about, that has you all worked up?” she asked as she looked at Luciano’s flushed face.

“Oh, nothing important!” Noah said. “I was just telling Luke that I am not sure if I can direct that movie next summer. I’d love to, as you know, but Damian mentioned something about taking me to Malta for business during the time of that amateur directing course. I’m thinking about giving up give up my dream of creating movies altogether, just like Luke had to give up his dreams about writing.”

“The difference is, that Luke didn’t give up his writing because he doesn’t have the time,“ Maddie said. “I’m sure Damien would give him all the time off he would need to write a novel or a play if he wanted. It’s just that Luke doesn’t want to write anymore, because it reminds him of the hard time he had when he thought that he was gay. Right Luke?“

“Yes!“ Luciano glared at Noah. Noah always reminded Luciano to be upfront about his problems to keep his mind on a straight path. On the other hand Noah himself had never told Maddie that he and Luciano had meet up at that straight camp all those years ago. That it had been there were they had gotten close and became friends. That it had been because of that camp that Luciano had asked Noah to come to Oakdale after his father had died. That Damian had given the job to Noah because Luciano told him that Noah had been someone who had the same problems in his past as Luciano had, and that it would be a help to have someone close who knew how hard it could get.

Luciano was the one who took all the blame from his family and friends, who was honest about his past, while Noah still kept his former gay affection a secret. Like he was still too ashamed of it.  
And now he was pretending it had never happened because he had found Maddie, and had gotten married.

Never mind that it had been Noah who had initiated that kiss they had shared last Christmas under the mistletoe.  
Luciano hadn’t really liked that kiss. Had pushed Noah off as fast as he had been able too. Noah was a great guy, but that was all he was, a friend. Kissing Noah had really been like kissing one of his sisters or brothers or parents. You don’t kiss those people with tongue, so it had been no surprise to Luciano that there hadn’t been a spark in him during that kiss. He even had been happy that Zoe had walked in on them.  
Happy and relived. Happy because he could get away from Noah and relieved because it hadn’t been one of the other Snyders or Maddie, all of whom had been in the next room.  
Guilt had soon followed. But not because he had kissed a guy, but because Noah had tried to blame it on Luciano. Told him that it would never have happened if Luciano wouldn’t have kept biting and licking his lips, if Luciano hadn’t made eyes at him.  
Luciano was pretty sure he had not done any of that. Noah blamed that forgetfulness at Luciano being drunk, forgetting that it had been him who had insisted that Luciano kept drinking with him.

But Noah had kissed him, so Luciano knew that every time Noah was chiding him for his slip up that day with Doctor Oliver, he really had no right to judge. He wasn’t over his problem either, he just managed to fake it better, having his wife and his little cottage, and telling everyone how perfect their little life was.

“We should go!” Luciano said, distracting them from the topic. He watched as Noah took Maddie by the arm, then followed them to the guest wing of Fairwinds, where Zoe currently lived.

She was already waiting for them. Her hair done up in an elegant ponytail, her Pisces medallion shining in her deep cleavage. Her legs probably looking lovely in the form fitting black stockings under the violet velvet hem of her otherwise dark black silk dress.   
She licked her deep red colored lips as she looked over Luciano and he swallowed dryly, nervously.

He had promised Zoe a lot of attention that evening, and then some.  
He pretty much had all but spelled it out that tonight it might happen. That tonight he might feel ready to sleep with her. And all just because Doctor Oliver had kisses him. Had tempted him. Luciano promised himself that he would try not to think about Doctor Oliver for the rest of the night.


	8. Chapter 8

“You look unusually happy today!” Katie said as she came into the kitchen.

“How do you know? I only moved in a couple of days ago,” Reid answered as he put the final slice of salami onto his sandwich.

“I’m good at reading people.” Katie smiled at him and leaned over the table. “So?” she asked.

“What?” Reid asked back, not caring that his mouth was full.

“Share!” Katie was all but bouncing on the spot.

“Rule number one, I don’t share my sandwiches,” Reid said, after he swallowed.

Katie hardly suppressed her laughter. “I didn’t mean the sandwich, you can keep that abnormality all to yourself, don’t worry! No, I want to know what makes you look so … different today”

Reid keep going at his sandwich as he mumbled about something having happened at work.

Katie pulled a chair out from under the table so fast she almost made it topple over. Sitting down she leaned over , and Reid had to move his sandwich in fear that Katie would otherwise swallow it all up by accident.

“You met someone, haven’t you?” She hit Reid on his arm. “Way to go! So is it a patient? A nurse?”

Reid furrowed his forehead. “A patient? A nurse? What makes you think I would even think about someone like that? I may be a rude son of a bitch, but I have ethics.”

But Katie didn’t seem to listen as she kept on interrogating him. “ So did you just see a nice girl? Or have you already asked her out? Perhaps you need my help? I’m good at match making. “

Reid fell back in his chair with a sigh. “What makes you think it was some young lady?”

“Oh, I have no problem if you like them older…”

Reid chuckled. “What if I like them male?”

“Oh!” Katie gaped. “You’re gay!”

“Perhaps I should start wearing a sign around my neck. You Podunk natives don’t seem to get it otherwise”

***

Zoe and Luciano stood at the foot of the stairs at Fairwinds. The evening had gone fairly well. They had been lucky and gotten a quite table in the back of Metro. Sitting opposite their friends, it hadn’t been much trouble for Luciano to take his cues from Noah, and treat Zoe with as much affection as possible.

Whenever Luciano had noticed how Noah would put his arms around Maddie, he had reached out and touched Zoe. Her hands, her arms, her hair, the back of her neck when he put his arm on the back of her chair.  
He’d moved closer to her and put his arm around her shoulder whenever he watched Noah pull Maddie closer and Maddie rested her head on Noah’s shoulder.

The few times Noah and Maddie had been kissing, Luciano had laced his fingers with Zoe’s and smiled at her.

If Zoe had realized that he would only try and establish contact between them was whenever the couple across from them had shown affection to each other, then she didn’t let him know it. He was thankful for it.

Luciano nervously fidgeted, uncomfortable with the idea of taking Zoe’s hand and leading her up the stairs. “You want something to drink from the kitchen?” he asked her in an attempt to stall time.

“No,” she said before she closed the space between them, “I want something else!” She stood on the tip of her toes and Luciano’s hand went around her waist on it’s own accord to steady her. Then her lips were on his.

Her kiss was demanding. She wasted no time, pressing her tongue between his lips, opening them up.  
He let it happen. He could kiss her. He had done it before, even if most of the time only lips on lips, not tongue on tongue.

He could feel the slight oiliness of her red lipstick, could feel how the slightly gooey film smeared over his own lips, could taste it.

He could smell her perfume, still lingering around her heavy and heady.

He could feel her fingers in his hair, her long fingernails slightly scratching against his skull.

He could feel the silk of her dress brushing against the back of his hands.

He could taste how her mouth was still sweet from the coke she had at the end of the night. If he concentrated just on that and tried to ignore everything else, it didn’t make much of a difference to kissing Doctor Oliver earlier that day.

Just a tongue sliding slippery around his own. The same and yet so different.

Dr. Oliver hadn’t tasted of soda, but rather of coffee, with a hint of caramel beneath it.

There hadn’t been the oily film of lipstick between them, instead his lips and face had been scratched by light traces of stubble.

There hadn’t been heavy perfume engulfing him, just but a hint of spicy, musky after shave.

Zoe’s fingers were cold and light on his hair, Doctor Oliver’s grip had been harder, his hands bigger and warmer.

Luciano moaned at the memory, and Zoe took it as an invitation, slipping her hands beneath his shirt. He tried not to flinch back as her nails scratched along his skin. And her cold hands ghosted up his abs.

“Take me to bed Luciano,“ Zoe said intently while one of her hands glided down Luciano’s arm. Then her fingers interlaced with his, and she dragged him up the stairs to her room.

Once they were behind closed doors, she took off his shirt before she pushed him none to gently on top of her bed.

He let himself bounce lightly on it. Tried not to look away as she stood in front of the bed and opened the belt of her dress, before she reached for the velvety hem and lifted the dress over her head.

Luciano let his eyes drift over her body. Her milky skin looked even paler in contrast to her black underwear.

Within moments she was on her knees on the bed and over him. He didn’t know what to do, laying there helplessly, his hands on his sides, trying to gulp away his discomfort.

“Touch me Luciano!” she demanded, as she took his hand and brought it up to her hip.

Encouraged he rubbed small circled over her skin, his fingertips occasionally brushing against her panties.

“Touch me all over,” she instructed him again, when he didn’t make any move to touch her somewhere else.

He put his other hand lightly on her arms, stroking up and down the lean limb.

Zoe smiled down at him, then she leaned forward, hiding them both away under her long dark hair. “Don’t be so shy, Luciano,” she whispered to him after a quick peck to his lips. “I’m not going to break. ”She took both of his hands this time and placed them directly on her breasts.

Luciano tried to shake of his momentary shock at her bold demand, He tried to remember everything he knew about how to handle a woman’s breast. Tried to remember all those magazine pictures he had to look at while hanging out with Kevin in his teen years, pretending he cared about what was pictured inside.  
He remembered something that had been staple material in every single of those magazines, He couldn’t be wrong by going with copying that. With newfound determination he closed his hands harder around Zoe’s breasts and squeezed, hard.

On top of him Zoe flinched. He couldn’t tell if in pain or pleasure.

“That’s a bit rough, Luciano, especially to start out on,” she finally said, her breath still a bit harsh from the pain and surprise. “Come, I’ll show you how it’s done correctly.”

She took his hand by his wrists and guided them up until only his fingertips were still touching her. She indicated for him to move his hands upwards, so his touch left the still clothed area of her breast, touching the bare skin above instead,

He was surprised at how soft the mounds of her breast really felt, when he only touched her like this.  
While it didn’t do much to arouse him, it intrigued him in other ways. Suddenly he wanted to see what Zoe reacted to different touches, wanted to know it from first hand experience, just in case he would pick up writing again, and one day would have to include a love scene in one of his works. So he let his fingers stroke over her skin more boldly, covering more of it. He noted the slight outbreak of goose bumps along her skin and was further encouraged. His interest sparked further, and he slipped three fingers under the fabric of her bra.

“Oh. Luciano, keep going! ” Zoe’s breath had become more ragged, so Luciano used one hand to slip the strap of the bra down her shoulders and was able to free one breast of it’s confinement.

Luciano could now see the dark coloring of Zoe’s nipple, half hard, standing out from the middle of the raised flesh. Carefully, he reached out, brushing with the tip of one finger, filing away the feel of it into his memories.

Zoe heaved a sigh. “Harder!” she demanded. “More!”

He stroked her nipple again, watching fascinated, as the tissue shrivelled up more, making it grow harder, bigger.

He used another finger, and squeezed the hard nub between them. Zoe moaned.

Before he really knew what he was doing Luciano reached for her other breast, pushing the bra out of the way as well, giving her other breast the same treatment. Wondering if he could make it just as hard as the first.

Zoe’s hands came to rest on the back of Luciano’s head, pressing him forward, until his vision was filled with her breast. He knew what she wanted, and curiously he opened his lips, blew his breath along her skin, trying to aim it directly at her hard nipple. Like on autopilot Luciano leaned forward and licked over it.

Zoe shuddered on top of him.

It surprised him to see that the wet nub could grown harder still. He leaned in again, and engulfed it between his lips, giving it an experimental suck. It felt nice and interesting enough, so he continued to do it for a bit longer.

He only came back to himself, realizing what he was doing, when he felt Zoe’s hands on the front of his pants, rubbing around in his crotch, trying to find his cock, trying to get his belt and pants open.  
At the same time he could feel how she had started to grind hard against his thigh, her breath coming in short puffs of breaths, whimpers and moans.

In one sift move he pushed her off of him, and jumped from the bed.

“Luciano!” Zoe softly moaned, half in disappointment, half in need as ran from her room.

He hurried down the halls and up a flight of stairs. Only when his own door was securely locked behind him, he realized that he was in trouble.

***

Across town Reid tossed and turned in his bed.

Katie had been right. He didn’t like to admit it, but he did feel happier. And it was because of kissing Luciano Grimaldi. It was silly, but he couldn’t get those few seconds out of his head.

No matter that his hopes for more were most likely for naught anyway.

He couldn’t really understand why anyone would go trough that whole ex-gay shit, but well, it seemed to work for some. Was Luciano one of them?

Reid tried to remember how Luciano had acted around that fiancée of his. He had been under shock when the two women had come to join them for dessert the other evening. And then distracted by the cake that had been served. But still, as far as he remembered Luciano hadn’t looked to happy in her presence. He also couldn’t remember them touching, let alone kissing, during that last hour he had spent at Fairwinds.

Today on the other hand …  
Luciano had been more than just responsive, kissing Reid back like there was no tomorrow. Too bad he had all but run from Reid and the hospital afterwards.

Reid grabbed his spare pillow and pressed it against his chest, willing sleep to come. But only more questions bubbled up in his mind.

Was Luciano really willing to go through with hiding his true self?  
Reid shuddered in horror, knowing he would have to talk to him about all that. If only to make sure he would keep his distance if Luciano really didn’t want to give into his desires. Otherwise things could get really awkward between them.

He could fight down his own desires around the young man. He had to, as he wasn’t going to blow his chances of running that neurology center because he made advances on some rich brat who was happy to stay in the closet.

No matter that his attraction for Luciano had increased tenfold after learning that the attraction was somewhat mutual.

Of course there could be another outcome as well. If Luciano realized that he wanted to give into his attraction. Wanted to explore what else there was beside the straight and narrow.

He would need a guiding hand if he wanted to relax, to accept himself the way he was. If he wanted to explore how it would be to give into his attraction for men in general and Reid in particular. And despite Reid’s dislike for all things mushy he would have to be there for young Mr. Grimaldi, if he really wanted him.


	9. Chapter 9

Reid hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Luciano Grimaldi since the day they kissed.

Sure they had been in contact due to the Grimaldi Pavilion, but all their e-mails had been strictly kept to the point and purely professional. Actually most of the time they were written by secretaries, assistants, or other personal at hand.

And if the few days between him arriving in Oakdale and the incident with the kiss had taught Reid anything about Luciano Grimaldi, it had been that the young man was hard to avoid and loved to stick his nose personally in his business plans, and even more so into the plans for the hospital unit.

As the week progressed it was obvious to Reid that Luciano was avoiding him. It was time to clear the air between them.

It didn’t take Reid long to find the headquarters of Grimaldi Shipping down by the docks. The huge glass building had to be an Oakdale landmark by it’s own right.

Reid snorted as he was told that he would find the offices of Luciano and his father on the top floor. Of course they had to be up there, it wouldn’t be pretentious and stereotypical enough otherwise.

“Doctor Oliver, I didn’t expect to see you today!” Luciano welcomed him.

Reid took the offered chair across from Luciano . “It came to my attention that I haven’t seen you all week, Mister Grimaldi.”

Luciano was sitting on the edge of his chair, his elbows on his desk. “I believed that would be of mutual interest. No small talk, just like you prefer, and more time for me to keep my attention on other projects. Did anything go wrong with the instructions for your wing? Did some of the communication not pass through?”

“It all passed just fine!” Reid said as he relaxed back into his own seat. “Yet I am sure that you would prefer to supervise those plans on the hospital yourself but don’t do it because you are afraid to run into me while doing so.”

Luciano didn’t answer but Reid could see how his face colored up. Reid smirked. “Don’t worry, Luciano, a kiss is just a kiss! It doesn‘t mean anything, nor will it happen again.” Reid kept looking him straight into the eyes and smiled smugly. “Unless you want it to!” he finished.

“I don’t want it to happen again!” Luciano answered curtly.

“Then it won’t,” Reid said while nodding his head. “ We could still be … friends.”

“Friends?” Luciano asked. There was a frown forming on his face, that looked out of place there.

“Yes. You know, occasionally hang out together without talking about work. I still don’t know Oakdale well, so perhaps you could show me around?”

Reid hoped he didn’t sound as stupid as he felt. He usually didn’t do friends, or hanging out. He also had absolutely no desire to get to know this town any better than he had to but he needed Luciano to agree to spend more time with him. Reid was sure that if he could archive that then the other man would give into their mutual attraction again and change his mind about kissing and other things. After all, Reid could play nice if it furthered his prospects of getting into the pants of a guy he really wanted.

***

So that evening Luciano took Reid around town, showing him what there was besides Al’s and Java. It wasn’t a lot and Reid was pretty sure he’d never go to any of those places again.

The best part of the evening came when they ended their tour of the town back at Fairwinds. Luciano took Reid around the ground level of the estate. Despite protests this included showing Reid the tennis court and the pool. Reid was a lot happier once they reached the giant kitchen, void of any personnel at this time of day. Under Luciano’s amused gaze Reid put together what he called a little snack, but Luciano referred to as a giant-monster of a sandwich. But in the end Luciano agreed that it tasted better than it looked.

Now they stood across form each other, just at arm's length. Reid felt the urge to close the small distance between them but instead he took a step back. “I should leave!” he said.

He was about to turn when Luciano surprised him by putting a hand on his lower arm. “Stay!” he said.

“You think that would be a good idea?” Reid asked.

“Yes” Luciano said, but the slight tremble in his voice gave away that he wasn’t as sure as he made it seem. “I’m sure it would help deepen our new friendship if we could do something together, without being in public.”

“You aren’t afraid of slipping?” Reid asked, unable and unwilling to ignore the elephant in the room.

“No,” Luciano said, a smile on his lips. “I know that you are a danger to me. That gives me the chance to brace myself around you, to be careful. Prevent myself from doing something stupid.”

“And what friendship-y thing do you have in mind since making out on the couch is out of the question?”

“Reid, don’t make it harder than it has to be.” Luciano said, unaware that for the first time he had called to other name by his given name.

“I’ll try!” Reid answered.

Luciano tore his eyes away from Reid and looked around the drawing room, desperate to find something to occupy them and keep them away from any dangerous topics.

“Do you play cards?” he asked after a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

“You don’t look like someone who’s got a good poker face.” Reid answered.

“Checkers, then? Chess?”

Reid grinned. “Chess it is.”

“You’re any good?” Luciano asked as he got the board and started to set the pieces up.

“I can win a game or two on occasion.” Reid replied lightly.

Reid’s grin grew with each move and each captured piece.

“I’m sure you would have played better, if you wouldn’t have stared at me for the whole game,” Reid teased Luciano after he won. “Can’t you handle playing with a man who’s good looking enough to be a male model?”

He watched as Luciano blushed, and Reid threw all caution to the wind. “Since I won, shouldn’t I get a price? What about a kiss? Or are you afraid that your daddy could come run in and catch us? Would he send you to bed without dinner?”

Luciano’s face took on even more color. “Listen,” he said, his voice hard, “you have no clue what would happen. You don’ know a thing about me or my family. How my illness is affecting the well being of every single person I love and care for.”

Reid frowned, thrown back by the sudden outburst of anger. “Then tell me, Luciano. Tell me why you think of your nature as an illness. I know that you want me. You told me yourself. So tell me now why you want to hide that desire away, to make yourself miserable, just so everybody else can feel a bit better about themselves.”

Luciano was still shaking with anger, but Reid could see how he took deep breaths to calm down enough to tell his side of the story.

“I already told you that I drank. A lot. Enough to almost kill myself, to make both my kidneys worthless. To get me a transplant in time my mother promised to marry some sleazy guy. That made the whole family miserable, my father Holden, my younger siblings. Everyone got hurt because I was a stupid gay kid.”

“Instead you decided to lie to yourself?”

“I choose to live a life, not a lifestyle.”

“Just because you are gay you don’t have to do the lifestyle bit, believe me. There are enough of us out there who don’t give a damn about the fashionable clothing of the season, the perfect haircut or Judy Garland’s birthday.”

Luciano shook his head . “I was already drinking like a fish to cope with admitting to myself that I was attracted to men. What would have happened if I’d given into that attraction?” He shuddered before he continued. “Would I drive up to Chicago every weekend? Sleep with nameless guy after guy in some seedy backroom? Would I have moved on from drinking to doing other drugs as well? Would I be on the way to kill myself or would I perhaps already have managed to do so? That certainly wouldn’t make my family proud of me. Not like they are now, with me choosing to take my life in my own hands and take all the opportunities offered to me. And there are just more of those if you are a straight man rather than a tweaked out party boy.”

Reid snorted. “One thing is for sure. You have watched way too many over-sketched, bad TV shows. I’m sure that for every Brian Kinney-wannabe there are at least two boring gay couples, who spend their evenings bickering over the remote rather than go out, fuck some stranger and get high.”

“If that is so, Doctor, than why are you here with me tonight?”

Reid frowned at the challenging tone of Luciano’s question. “I’m here or am I not? Not up in Chicago, searching for some random guy to fuck in a dirty public restroom like you are accusing me off, based on nothing more than my sexual orientation.”

Luciano fisted a pillow on his side in frustration. “Just tell me one thing,” he said, his eyes hard. “If it is so fine, so ok to be gay, then why are you alone? Can you look me in the eyes and tell me that you have found your one true love, the person you can imagine spending the rest of your life with?”

Reid laughed humorlessly. “I can be a raging son of a bitch, I work insane hours, I have a bad temper and even on my good days I’m not the most civil of persons,” was the only explanation he gave.

“I didn’t ask if you are difficult to live with, because I am sure, in our own special way, we all are!” Luciano said knowingly. “But isn’t that the thing about true love? That you still can’t let go. That you still want to be around that person even if they drive you insane, even if the drive you away?”

“Where have you learned all this crap?” Reid asked. “Your dentists office?”

“I know a lot of people who have that kind of life. Who love so hard and so much that they can’t stay together, but they can’t stay apart either.”

“Sounds toxic. But you Luciano, do you believe that Zoe is that kind of love for you? You’re one true love, your soul mate?”

Luciano smiled sadly. “No, I don’t think so. I love her in my own way, like a good friend, a sister, and that is enough, it has to be. Some of us just aren’t meant to live happily ever after. But I made my choice. I choose to at least have a shoot at a normal, good life. I may not be insanely in love, but I won’t be constantly miserable either. That’s good enough for me.”

Reid just chuckled and shook his head. “Are you listening to yourself?” he asked, clearly annoyed. “I would have taken you for the kind of person who would do anything to find that so-called soul mate and do anything, no matter how unreasonable, to keep them happy. Instead you settle for normal and good enough. You’re just helping an extended family member to get accepted. That has nothing to do with love. It’s like you have already given up on love, because deep down you know that you can’t have love and happiness at the same time as pleasing everybody, pretending to be straight. ”

“You still haven't answered my question, Dr. Oliver.“ Luciano said coldly. “What about you? All out and proud as they say. All I want is a simple yes or no answer. Have you found that one person? And don‘t tell me you are not interested, because if it happens it doesn't matter that you never believed in true love, or soul mates, or that you never wanted it. If it happens, it just happens, and you have no choice in the matter.”

Reid stood up and turned to leave. A step away from the door he paused and looked back at Luciano over his shoulder. “No, I haven’t!”

“Then it is not your right to judge me!”


	10. Chapter 10

It was an uncomfortable silence that engulfed them when Reid and Luciano stepped into the elevator at Grimaldi days later. Once again they had managed to avoid each other since the confrontation at Fairwinds. But today they couldn’t avoid each other, as both needed to sign off the plans with the architect from Chicago.

“Shit!” Reid muttered under his breath as the elevator cabin came to a standstill between floors nine and ten.

Luciano leaned forwards and pressed the emergency button. “No need to worry, doc,” he said lightly. “Happens all the time since we installed those new cabins a couple of weeks back. We have tech service in the house. They know what to do. We‘ll be up and out in no time.”

“Happens all the time?“ Reid’s eyes almost popped out of his head. “Then why are you still stepping inside these things if you know that there is a good chance that you get stuck?”

Luciano just shrugged. “The odds aren’t that big that it happens to you. It’s is only the third time for me. Most of the time the elevators are empty when they get stuck. It’s still better than taking the stairs all the time just to be on the safe side”

Reid loosened his tie and removed the sweat breaking out on his forehead with the back of his hand. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he muttered. He collapsed against one of the walls, his knees feeling weak under him.

Luciano stepped closer and looked him over. “Are you claustrophobic?” he asked as his eyebrows rose.

“I just don’t like tight spaces!” Reid answered, his hand gripping for the handrail behind him. He could hear his blood pounding in his hears and feel his heart hammering against his chest.  
And of course his panic attack had to happen in front of Luciano Grimaldi of all people.

He could see a wide grin break out on the other man’s face, and prepared for the worst. Of course Luciano would use this new knowledge of his weakness to pay him back for some of the things he had put him trough in the past weeks.

And Mr. Grimaldi didn’t disappoint. Just moments later he was jumping up and down besides Reid, making the thin metal beneath their feet quake and groan.

“Just imagine what would happen if we crash!” Luciano was saying in a giddy, teasing tone. “If this cabin starts shaking and the walls start closing in on us. We’d fall down ten floors, and if the crash isn’t killing us then we will suffocate in the smoke as flames start breaking out around us.”

Reid did his best to imagine everything but that. But it was useless. The rich brat was only helping his own panic stricken fantasy along with his list of possible scenarios.

He had to stop him.

Reid let go of the handrail and lunged himself across the cabin, right at Luciano’s body, crashing them into the opposite wall. The elevator groaned some more at the impact.

“Are you insane? Are you trying to kill us?” Reid yelled at Luciano.

He could feel hard, warm puffs of breath hit him in the face as Luciano looked at him, stunned to silence by Reid’s unexpected move.

One look at Luciano’s slightly parted, wet lips was enough to make Reid forget that he was trapped in a small box several floors above save ground. Instead he remembered how those full lips had felt against his the day Luciano had confessed his feelings.

Luciano had tasted so sweet and had kissed back so eagerly, despite all his words to the contrary.

Moments later Reid repeated his actions from that day. He leaned in and sucked Luciano’s bottom lip between his own until Luciano gave in and opened his mouth to return the kiss.

Their tongues rubbed together in a leisurely pace. Reid could feel Luciano’s hands wandering over his back, his fingers first digging into his back between his shoulder blades and his spine.

Then Luciano’s other hand came up and his fingers buried themselves into Reid’s hear. Reid groaned in pleasure and Luciano answered with a small moan of his own.

Reid ripped his mouth off Luciano’s just to kiss along the other man’s jaw and down his neck.

Luciano was still reacting welcoming. He pulled on the lapels of Reid’s suit jacket, trying to pull him closer, while he mewled like a kitten under Reid’s ministrations.

Just as Reid was about to sneak his hand under Luciano’s jacket to pull his shirt out of his pants, the elevator cabin gave a lurch and continued to move up the remaining floors.

Reid was almost thrown off balance, not because of the elevators sudden movement, but because Luciano had given his chest and his shoulder a hard shove.

“Stop corrupting me and my progress!” Luciano hissed as the elevator came to a stop at the top floor, and Luciano hurried out in front of Reid.


	11. Chapter 11

The next afternoon Reid called up Luciano’s office in an attempt to apologize, but he only got his secretary.

“I‘m sorry, Doctor Oliver, but Mr. Grimaldi never comes in on Fridays. He spends them out on the Snyder Farm.”

“What’s a Snyder Farm?”

“It’s place a few miles outside of town. “

“Can you give me directions?”

“I‘m sorry,” the secretary answered. “ but I’m not free to do so.”

Moments after hanging up on the bint that Luciano called his secretary, Reid called his roommate, remembering that her name was Snyder and that she was somehow related to Luciano.

“Hey, Katie, I need to find the Snyder Farm. I guess that is a family place of yours? Can you give me directions?”

Bubbly as always, he could practically hear Katie bounce around as she gave him the directions without asking why he needed to know or why he wanted to go there.

As Katie had promised the farm was easy enough to find and Reid smirked to himself as he came to a halt in front of a nice house placed between a couple of fields.

He wondered if he should tell Luciano that his secretary was worthless, and that it didn’t make much sense for her to first tell a stranger that he was out at this place just to refuse giving directions when basically the whole town knew it to be a landmark.

Reid quickly looked around, hoping to find someone he could ask about Luciano, but seeing nobody he decided to knock on the door.

An elderly woman in an apron answered the door and Reid could see directly into the kitchen of the farmhouse as the smell of freshly backed cookies hit him in the face.

“Yes?” the woman asked as she looked Reid up and down, friendly confusion on her face. It was obvious that she didn’t recognize him when she otherwise could place all the other residents of the community.

“Mrs. Snyder?” Reid asked, taking a wild guess, and she nodded. “I’m searching for Luciano Grimaldi? I was told I could find him out here today?”

The woman squared her shoulders and seemed to block the door further. “Who are you? And why would you want to talk to him?”

“I’m doctor Reid Oliver, Mr. Grimaldi and I work together at the hospital.”

“Wait a moment, please.”

The door closed in his face and Reid frowned at it. This whole day was turning out a bit too strange for his liking. First the farm, then all those people trying to protect Luciano from him for whatever reason.

Had the young man said anything to anyone about the last couple of times they had to deal with each other? That they had kissed once or twice? That Luciano felt the need to be protected from Reid and his evil homo ways?

Just then the door opened and Mrs. Snyder stood in front of him again. This time she was smiling warmly at him. “Come in, Doctor, Luke said he doesn’t mind talking to you. I’m Emma Snyder by the way. Luke is my grandson.”

She let him in and showed him the way to the living room. It wasn’t clearly recognizable as such. There were various upturned chairs with blankets thrown over them as well as over the table. Furthermore there were pillows of all sorts and sizes tossed all over the floor.

A big quilt quivered as something moved under the table, and Luciano Grimaldi’s head poked out from underneath it.

“Hey there!“ Luciano smiled at Reid, before he came crawling out completely.

“What are you doing under the table?” Reid asked in disbelieve as he took in the young man in his crumpled suit.

Luciano’s grin just got wider as he brushed lint of his leg pant. “We are protecting the cookies from the evil, cookie eating dragon,” he said seriously.

“What?” Reid was confused but then he suddenly could hear the giggling from two children coming from underneath the mountain of throw pillows.

“Come on, Doctor Oliver! Have you never built a fort out of pillows and blankets when you were a child?”

“I don’t think so, Mr. Grimaldi.” Reid took another critical look at the strange thing in front of him, something he could only remember ever encountering in adventure books or on some TV shows, that he had been allowed to watch as long as he wasn’t creating a mess in the living room his mother was so proud of.

“Aside from that, aren’t you a little old to be considered a child? Even if you sometimes behave like one?” he lashed out instead.

Luciano grinned at him again. That sunny grin that always made Reid’s stomach flop just enough to remind him that he was standing in front of a hot, young gay - well, ex-gay - man, he wouldn’t mind throwing to the floor and make a mess in the living room with.

“You are never too old to have an adventure under a table,” Luciano simply said. “And aside from that, I am not playing the game alone.” He lifted up the edge of the blanket. “Hey guys,“ he called under the table, “come and say hi to Doctor Oliver.”

A young boy and a girl, just a little older, came crawling out, grinning at Reid with smiles way too similar to Luciano’s for Reid’s comfort.

“My brother Ethan and my sister Natalie” Luciano introduced them. “This is Doctor Oliver. He works with me,” Luciano introduced Reid to the kids. Ethan grinned shyly at him while Natalie gave a wave of her hand.

“You want some freshly baked cookies, Doctor Oliver?” Natalie asked, showing the empty slots in her teeth.

“Always!” Reid answered honestly.

“Then come into the fort, any friend of Luke’s is a friend of ours and gets to have cookies”

They crawled further into their big building out of soft materials, and Luciano went back down on his knees too.

“You have to be kidding me!” Reid said dryly.

Luciano just shrugged as he lifted the edge of the big quilt. “Nope,“ he said with a wicked grin. “Cookies are only allowed inside the fort, we don’t want the big, bad, cookie eating dragon get to them after all.”

Reid watched Luciano’s delectable ass vanish under the table again, and was ready to contemplate leaving without talking to Luciano about their last encounters, when he heard the crumbling of cookies between teeth.

With a sigh he fell to his knees and entered the fort.. He did if for cookies after all.

***

“So, what’s the deal anyway?” Reid asked as he cleaned off the last of the cookie crumbles from his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why is everyone so intent on keeping you protected when you are here?”

Luciano scratched his head.

“I guess it has a lot to do with some stuff that happened when I was younger. You know, me and Damian, we didn’t have such a great relationship with each other in the past. And he, as he told me you found out, had a bit of a shady past together with his family, and the others of the Grimaldi Clan…“

Luciano took a deep breath before he continued, “well, I got kidnapped.”

“You got kidnapped?” Reid repeated dumbstruck

“Yeah, once or twice…”

“Once or twice?”

“Don’t sound so surprised. It happens!”

“You are indeed from a strange family if you think it is normal occurrence to get kidnapped, let alone more than just once.”

Luciano shrugged.

“Well, anyway, this is a small town. And even with my father and me getting along so much better for the last couple of years, my family is still a bit…let’s call it concerned. They don’t trust him to really have changed his colors. So if a stranger shows up here, at the home base of the Snyder Family, asking for me, they get a little overprotective. Even more so when my siblings are involved too. I love them, and it is easy to get to me through them. So even if the people who might try to come here to harm me can’t get me, they could get one of the little ones, knowing that I would do everything for them.”

He looked at Natalie and Ethan, who were now attacking a stuffed dragon with a bunch of dolls to keep the fort save.

“I love my siblings, but I’m also a danger to them. I could never forgive myself if anything happened to them just because we share a mother, and my biological father has enemies that I happened to inherit together with the family money, power and influence.”

Luciano reached out and carded his fingers through Ethan’s hair. “But I could never give up spending time with them. So I keep Fridays clear in my schedule to come here and spend time with them, where we are all relatively save. Protected by family and the fact that hardly any stranger comes out here.”

“Perhaps your secretary should not tell strangers on the phone that you are out here on the farm,” Reid advised. “She would not give me the directions but once I knew where you were, it was easy enough to find someone to point me out here.”

“Who did you ask?” Luciano inquired.

“Katie. I remembered just in time that she’s somehow related to you”

Luciano nodded.

“True, but she also knew that you are no danger to me. After all I brought you to meet her and move into her house, and I would never put her or Jacob in danger. She knows that you are trustworthy enough.”

“How do you know that I can be trusted? That I’m not hired by some Grimaldi to befriend you and kidnap you and your siblings, your grandmother and the dog right now?”

“My father has his ways of finding out stuff like that, and if you make it past his approval, that is good enough for me”

Reid nodded.

Both men fell silent for a while, and watched as the children kept playing, making the dragon crash a few of the dolls under his soft belly.

“Why did you come out here, Reid?” Luciano asked at long last, still not looking at Reid. “I gather that you liked the cookies, but I don’t think you came all the way out here just in the off chance that there would be any of those. So, don’t tell me you searched me out just to play with me and my brother and sister under a table because you were bored.”

“I’m never bored” Reid said, “there is always something happening at the hospital, or at the building site, or some medical journals to read. But you are right. I came here with a reason. I think we need to talk. About what happened between us.”

“Nothing happened between us!” Luciano tried to convince them both.

“Are you really trying to tell that to yourself?” Reid asked, catching a doll that was flying into his direction, when the dragon attacked with his spiky tail.

Luciano looked down, then muttered, “you are right, perhaps we should talk. But not in front of the little ones”

“Sure” Reid agreed.

“It won’t take long” Luciano said, after he looked down at his watch. “My mother should be here any minute now to take them back home with her.”

Just like on command they could hear steps approaching and then the quilt was pulled off.

“Ethan, Natalie, time to go home,” s dark haired woman said, as she looked under the table. She looked surprises at Reid.

“Who are you?” she asked him as the children crawled out from under the table, followed by Luciano and Reid.

“Doctor Reid Oliver,” he simply said, brushing out his jeans rather than offering her his hand.

“He works with me on the new wing at Memorial,” Luciano explained.

“You shouldn’t bring your business partners home, Luke” she chided him. “Especially not to the farm. Heaven knows what could happen.”

“My name’s Luciano, mother!” Luciano said firmly, and Reid realized for the first time that so far he had only heard Noah, Emma Snyder and the kids call Luciano Luke. It looked like there was an unwritten rule as to who was allowed to do so.

“And besides, Doctor Oliver isn’t just my business partner, he’s a friend, or at least he is becoming one.”

Luciano’s mother, who still hadn’t introduced herself, looked Reid up and down critically before shrugging her shoulders.

“I just don’t want you to get hurt, Luciano!” she said

“I’m careful!” Luciano answered.

She took Ethan and Natalie by their hands then once again looked back at Luciano. “Why don’t you come home with us?”

Luciano shook his head, his lips pressed together into a thin line. “ I will go home once I talked with Doctor Oliver. Home to Fairwinds!”


	12. Chapter 12

„I’ll take it that you and your mother aren’t on the same page,“ Reid said as Luciano was leading them down a dirt path behind the farm.

„You could say that,“ Luciano answered, then continued after a pause, „she hates that I got so close to my father, that I’m working with him. That I came to trust him and his judgement.“ He kicked a pebble of the path. „ She didn't like it at all when I first came out as a teen, then she changed her mind as Damian made it possible for me to go to rediscovery camp and get my life back together, to choose a straight life. Since I came back she is trying to turn me gay again, can you believe it?“

Reid took the effort to bite his lip and for once not say what he was thinking. “You know what keeps surprising me?” he asked instead.

“What?”

“For someone who tries so desperately to be normal, to leave this gay thing behind, you don’t seem to be able to leave the topic alone. I must have told you a dozen times that I am fine with us just being friends, because that obviously is what you need. Just a regular guy as a friend. Or in my case, just a regular gay guy as your friend. I repeat for the one dozen and first time now, I don’t care, and I am fine with being friends. I don’t need to jump every guy just because he sends me signals that I think are pretty obvious… I’m not that kind of guy, Luciano”

They reached what looked like the shore of a small lake.

“Where are we?” Reid asked.

“Snyder Pond”

“Pond? Are you sure that’s a pond?”

“Sure, how else should a pond look like?”

“Like those things you step into on the streets after a few hours of rain”

“That’s a puddle, Reid”

“Not in Dallas. In Dallas, that’s a pond”

Luciano laughed. “No, around here, this is the Snyder pond”

“Why am I surprised to hear that your family owns a pond? After all they also own a hospital, an airport and a ship yard. Never mind half a dozen companies, as well as every hotel, diner and coffee shop in town.”

“We don’t own all that stuff,” Luciano tried to deflect. “And we don’t really own the hospital or the airport either.”

“No, you just put a lot of money into it, sit on all the boards, and are able to buy as many votes as you want, right?”

Luciano shrugged sheepishly.

“Aren’t we getting of topic ?” Luciano asked. “Didn’t you want to tell me something awfully important about how you think about me, and my silly decision to choose a lifestyle that is good for me, that does not make my family and my friends hate me, and that won’t lead me to taking drugs or killing myself or sleeping around and getting infected with all kinds of sexually transmitted diseases?”

Reid felt like walking over to the nearest tree and banging his head against its trunk. “Are we seriously back to that train of thought? Not taking into consideration that you can be gay and not sleep around, not kill yourself, not be unhappy, and not take all kinds of drugs. Or that all those things can happen even if you’re not gay but just choose to live dangerously or just make stupid decisions?”  
Reid had to will his hands out of his hair, before he would rip them all out out of frustration.  
“It’s just …,” he threw his hands in the air. “ Do you realize that every time we are together, we are coming back to this one thing? This one topic? It’s all about gay gay gay with you. Like you don’t want to be gay, but you can’t stop taking about it all the fucking time”

“What are you talking about?” Luciano asked, locking slightly shocked at Reid.

“You know, aside from the thing that I happen to be gay I am a pretty normal guy too. We could talk about baseball and football or even ice hockey. I like sports. I also like to talk about food, and all things having to do with brains, all trough I know that most people don’t want to talk with me about that, because I use to get all medical and nerdy when other people only understand that there are left and right brain halves and they do different things. Do you know what I usually don’t talk about with people I consider friends or close enough to something that could be called friends?”

“The weather?” Luciano guessed.

“Well, that too, but the other thing would be homosexuality. Seriously, I don’t think I talked so much about all things gay in the last decade as I did in the past few days with you. Combined!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, Luciano, really”

“Why?”

“Because it’s not something I need to talk about constantly. It’s just something I am, and I accepted it a long, long time ago. Perhaps before I even really knew what it meant to be gay, I just am. And no matter of how much I talk about it, it won’t change, and I don’t want it too. Are you right-handed?”

“Yeah?” Luciano answered perplexed. “What has that to do with anything?”

“I’d just like to know how often you talk with people at length about the fact that you are right-handed.”

“Hardly ever,” Luciano said, still not getting where this was going.

“See! It’s just something that is. It’s not something you need to talk about again and again and again. Just like you don’t have to talk to left-handed people all the time about how different it is, and how they feel about being different, about how strange they are, or how they feel to be left-handed. It’s just something that you accept and don’t question, and hardly ever talk about in detail. Because it just is. And that is exactly the way I feel about my sexual orientation. You on the other hand are somebody that constantly has to bring up the topic, like you are left-handed but wanted to be right-handed and went to a right hand camp, and now need to talk to everyone who is left-handed about how you are not left-handed anymore.”

Luciano scratched his head as Reid’s words sunk in. He realized that the doctor had a point. That he had never talked as much about his problems and his confusion and his changed lifestyle with anyone, not even with Noah, in all the years since he went to the camp. But not that he had met Reid he could not ignore that Reid had something fascinating on himself, and Luciano just couldn’t’ help but bring up the topic of homosexuality every time he was in the vicinity of him.

“I’m sorry!” Luciano said, his voice getting small. “I didn’t want to force you to talk about your sexuality all the time. But yeah, you are right, I just seem to be unable to stop and bring it up whenever I see you.” He looked at Reid. “Do you have any idea as to why that would be? Anything in my brain that makes me unable to stop bringing it up?”

“Aside from the usual human curiosity.? No, I don’t think so. But you probably never meet a gay man in your life that didn’t try to change himself, so of course you are fascination with me.”

“Don’t smirk like that, Reid,” Luciano gave him a shove with his elbow. “You are just too full of yourself, so of course you like that someone is fascinated with you.”

“Oh yeah, Mr. Grimaldi, no doubt about that,“ his smirk grew bigger for a moment before he sobered up again. “But to get back as to why you can’t think of anything else around me. Aside from being fascinated with me, you also seem to wonder if it really would be the worst option to let yourself allow it, to at least experience something with me.”

Reid looked at Luciano, who had sat down, before he lowered himself next to him. “Have you ever slept with a man, Luciano? Perhaps with Mr. Mayer? ”

“No,” Luciano answered hurriedly. “Nothing ever happen between Noah and me. , at least not like that. We kissed, once. He initiated it. It didn’t do anything for me.”

“Unlike when I am kissing you?”

“Yeah!” Luciano blushed. “Okay, you can be proud of yourself”

Reid smiled his crooked half smile. “I am, my dear.” He scooted closer to Luciano, slightly touching his face with the his hand.

Luciano unintentionally leaned into the touch, and closed the space between them.

“It’s okay Lucia… Luke,” Reid said. “It is okay to want this, to want me. Give in to what you want. Give in to have something that makes you happy, no matter what everyone else thinks about it.”

Luciano ignored the voice in his head that sounded like Noah, that warned him not to do what he wanted to do. Instead he leaned forward and kissed Reid.

He kissed Reid softly and carefully. He didn’t let his desire or his lust or his attraction take over. He keep the kiss light, a deliberate decision.

He kissed Reid because he wanted to kiss him, because he wanted to relish the feeling that Reid woke in him, that he only felt in Reid’s presence.

Luciano lifted his hand and came to rest it into Reid’s hair, let his fingertips stroke over the soft curls.

“I want this,” he said as he detangled himself from Reid and broke the kiss. “I want you, I want to kiss you, I want to kiss you as often as I can.”

“I’m not going to stop you Luke.” Reid paused for a moment, stroking his fingertips over Luciano’s cheek again. “Is it fine with you if I call you Luke?”

“Perfect!” Luciano answered.

“Good,” Reid said, “because I realized you didn’t like it when your mother did it”

“It‘s just a handful of people I allow to call me Luke these days. But you are definitely among those. Say it again”

“Luke!” Reid whispered.

And Luciano kissed him again, pulling him closer, letting himself fall down into the grass beneath them, pulling Reid over him, clinging to him, not wanting to let go, not wanting that kiss to end. This time he allowed the kiss to grow intense with not only emotion but also with lust and want and need.


	13. Chapter 13

There was a big smile on Luciano’s face when he came home to Fairwinds early that evening..

He had had a great day. First playing with his younger siblings, and then he had cookies under the table them and with Reid.

He would never have believed the serious and moody doctor would agree to this. But the surprise was worth it. The whole day had been worth it, behaving like a child, behaving so out of character.

Kissing Reid.

Pulling Reid over him

Kissing Reid in a way that could only be called making out.

Luciano blushed as he thought about what could have happened at the pond if the weather would have been warmer.

They probably wouldn’t have stopped at sneaking some touches to bare skin under their shirts and sweaters. They would probably have taken those off, perhaps the pants too …

Luciano was sure he was blushing to the tips of his hair as he wondered if it would have been possible that they wouldn’t even have stopped there.

That if it had been summer they would have gone skinny dipping. Would have gotten to feel each other all naked and wet and slippery in the pond…

Would have kissed intertwined like that…

Luciano’s breath picked up just thinking about all the possibilities.

He hurried up the stairs to his room, and couldn’t get the door closed behind him fast enough. He needed to get out of his pants, needed to take this fantasies further.

All he had been able to feel under his hands today were a few square inches of Reid’s skin, his lips, his stubbly cheeks.

Luciano threw himself on top of his bed, tore his suit pants off, loosened his tie and opened his shirt just enough to not soil it too much. He wanted, no, he needed to come now. Come to the image of Reid. To the idea of things he could do to Reid the next time they would see each other.

Luciano wanted to make sure that it would be here, at Fairwinds, when Damian and Zoe were still at work, when they would have the house to themselves. Luciano would take Reid up to this room, behind this closed door, would throw him down on just this bed. Would strip him naked. Would have his hands and fingers and his mouth all over Reid.

They would start with a kiss, would take those kisses to the rest of their bodies, their necks, their chests, would suck and bite and lick.  
He wanted to leave a mark on Reid’s collarbone, have Reid leave a mark on him, claiming him as Reid’s for at least a week.

He wanted to have his hands all over Reid’s chest, wanted to see how hard he could get Reid’s nipples. Wanted to suck on them, bite them, wanted the same done to his own.

He wanted Reid’s long, nimble, elegant fingers over his ribs, feeling them stroke him just this side of a tickle.

Oh those fingers ...

Luciano could definitely get used to the idea of those fingers all over him again and again.

He wanted them all over him, all over his arms and legs and shoulders and his back and his belly and his thighs …

He wanted them on his cock, on his balls, on his ass. Oh yes, those long, long, long and skilled fingers would feel so good all over his ass, spreading his cheeks, teasing his entrance…

Luciano had to bite down on the back of his hand. He hadn’t started to touch himself but he was already ready to scream just from thinking along those lines.

He couldn’t hold on to his sanity any moment longer, he needed to get his own hands around his cock, needed to stroke himself to the idea of Reid’s hands opening him up, sinking into him, finger by finger, by finger. His whole hand.

Luciano had seen that once, in a moment of weakness, while searching out some gay porn. It had freaked him out back then and he had taken it as a lesson that sex between men was brutal and painful.

But right now he was so far gone in his lust, that he wanted to know how it would feel if Reid would do it to him.

Luciano reached for his aching cock, stroking it harder and harder at the idea of being driven mad with need and lust. Moments later he was trashing on his bed, screaming at the top of his lungs as he came.  
It didn’t matter that he had his shirt half opened before he started out to keep it clean. The violent spurts of his release hit his shirt, the skin underneath his eyes and even his hair.

Luciano kept shivering for minutes, aftershocks running through him again and again, not letting him come down from his high. Then he started shaking harder with sobs breaking free from his throat. Tears running down his face. It was like an emotional dam had broken.

Luciano was unable to count all the times he had ever jerked off, had ever come, But he knew that not even the first time when he had tired it out, and had found himself unable to stop the movements of his hands, had been as intense, as emotional, as satisfying as this time.

But one thing he knew. It had been years since he had allowed himself to come to the image of another man. To fantasies of having another man do things to him.  
He had forbidden himself those fantasies for so many years, he hadn’t even remembered how good it felt to come while letting his mind wander rather than control every thought, every emotion.

Slowly he climbed out off bed, cleaning himself off with the remaining clean parts of his shirt. Afterwards his hands hovered for a moment over his hamper, but then he decided not to have his clothes from this day washed.

The grass stains in his pants were possibly too bad for any cleaning anyway, so he could just put all those cloths to the side and keep them soiled as long as possible as a reminder of this day. Of his revelation, of his breakthrough.

His epiphany!


	14. Chapter 14

Zoe and Damien were already sitting in the dining room, heads together, softly laughing about one thing or another, when Luciano came down for dinner.

“Hi guys,” Luciano greeted them as they both looked up and smiled at him.

“Hey Luciano, darling,” Zoe said and stood up, went her tip toes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. “Did you have a great day with your siblings?”

“Yeah,“ Luciano said. “We had fun, we build a fort out of pillows and blankets in grandma’s living room, and had cookies underneath it”

Zoe lifted her eyebrows at that. “Aren’t you a bit too old for that Luciano? Creeping under tables? I mean it is one thing if Natalie and Ethan or even Faith do it. But you? That is really not what you should do at your age.”

“We were just playing together.” Luciano shrugged, feeling confused at to why his fiancée was scolding him for having fun with his siblings.“It’s just fun. I always loved to do this myself when I was younger, and now it is just as much fun doing it with the younger ones.”

“Sure, it is fun if you are a kid, Luciano, but you aren’t a child anymore, you’re an adult now, you need to leave stuff like that behind you. That make-believe won’t make you a better man, and you have to be a man now,” she continued “We are soon going to be married, you are going to be a husband, and perhaps soon, a father too”

“Don’t you think that something like that would make me a better father to our children? Spending time with them? Playing with them?”

Zoe sighed. “Oh Luciano,” she said. “You have your work and the hospital board, and one day you will have to run Grimaldi shipping by yourself. You won’t have all that much time to play with my ... well, our children or your siblings anymore. That is the job of the nannies. After all they are paid to take care of the kids and play with them, not you.”

“Zoe is right, Luciano, you have to man up soon. The good years are coming to a close. Now you have to take over responsibility and be a good family and business man, not a child who eats cookies under a table pretending that you are in a fort and have to protect it from evil forces,” Damien said while he looked back and forth between Zoe and Luciano.

Luciano dropped into his chair, a strange feeling setting off in his stomach. He had already felt some guilt about his decision when he came downstairs, and now his family told him that everything he had done today was wrong. He hadn’t even told them about Doctor Oliver yet. How he had come out to the farm and spend time with him, and how he had come to play with Natalie and Ethan under the table too. Without making much of a fuss. He had never scolded Luciano for his behaviour, or for bringing up the idea of him joining in.

Dinner was served, and Luciano started to stab peas on his fork, sunken deep into his thoughts .He wondered if he really wanted to be the kind of man his father and Zoe expected him to become once he was married. Somehow he had known that this was what was expected from him soon. Taking more responsibility towards his family, Zoe, the business.

Was this the reason he had reacted the way he did today? Running with open arms towards temptation and away from all the responsibility he soon had to carry? Was it because of this looming change that he had decided that now, after all those years, it would be a good idea to give into his homosexuality? That he was willing throw all he had accomplished to the wind, and fling himself into the arms of the first desirable man, just to get away from this responsibility?

He could remember reading something about a thing called a quarter-life crisis in a magazine in the waiting room of his dentists office. Was this what he was suffering from right now?

Why had his life suddenly become so complicated in just a few hours? Why didn’t he know anymore what he wanted himself?

“I think I need to go to bed early today, it was a long day,” Luciano said. He pushed his only half finished plate away.

“There’s cake, son,” Damien said.

“Yes, Luciano, stay, please,” Zoe tried to keep him around too. “And we could spend some time together after dessert. Watch a movie or do something else relaxing.”

She gave Luciano a look that clearly told him what she had in mind with something relaxing.  
That she was still upset that he had run from her bed and that she wasn’t willing to let that stand between them. That she expected him to sleep with her, soon.

He decided not to go to upstairs to bed. He would be better off leaving the house for a while. Go for a walk.

He wandered around for a while without aim, and as he looked up he stood in front of a nice little house just a street away from the Lakeview.

Noah’s house.

***

Loud banging against the apartment door interrupting Reid from jolting down scolding notes into the margins of a journal article by Dr. Meredith. He wondered how that deli-slicer ever had made it on the short list of candidates to run what was now HIS new wing. Was Bob Hughes really that senile? The Grimaldis that easily impressed by a plagiarist?

„Katie!“ Reid called for his room-mate to take care of the rude interruption.

„Why don’t you open it?“ she called back from the nursery.

„I’m busy!“ he answered.

„And I‘m up to my elbows in baby poop!“

With a sigh he threw his notes on the coffee table and got up to open the door as another loud pounding came against it. Reid got up heavily and opened the door abruptly. Noah Mayer almost hit him in the face as he was about to hammer against the door again.

„What do you want?“ Reid asked not too friendly.

„We need to talk,“ Noah said.

„About?“

„Luke,“ Noah answered as if that explained everything.

Unfortunately it explained enough to let Reid know that this visit meant trouble.

He wondered if Luciano had told his old camp buddy about what had happened between them.

“I don’t know why we should or need to talk about Mr. Grimaldi. Did something happen to him? Did his butler misplace his silver spoon? Or perhaps a string on his tennis racket snapped?”

“I think you know exactly why we need to talk about Luke, Reid!” Noah shouldered his way into the apartment.

“Hey, why don’t you come in?” Reid said to Noah’s back.

“Where's your room?” Noah asked and looked around the living room.

Reid lifted his eyebrows. “ I usually expect an invitation to dinner first before I let strange men into my bedroom.” He made a point of checking Noah out as obviously as possible, while smirking seductively.

He had to fight back laughter as he saw how Noah flushed under his gaze. “But perhaps I should make an exception for you. After all, tall, dark and demanding is quite the type. Men like you get me all hot and horny.”

Noah gaped for air. “I’m not gay… and I don’t want you to get all wired up and aroused over me,“ he hissed, spit flying from his mouth.

“Then why are you so insistent about getting into my bedroom, Mr. Mayer?” Reid asked as innocently as he could while smirking dirtily.

“Because we need to talk,” Noah grumbled, “in private.”

Reid made sure to sigh extra heavy. “If we must”

“We must!” Noah insisted, and Reid led him to his room, making sure to occupy the only chair. He invited Noah with a gesture of his hand to sit on the bed.

Noah looked over the bed suspiciously and decided to remain standing.

“Then talk.”

“Luke told me what you did at the pond!”

“I didn’t do anything Mr. Grimaldi didn’t like,” Reid answered. “His eagerness to participate in what we did made that clear enough.”

“Luke doesn't always know what is good for him.”

“But you do know what is good for him, don’t you?” Reid asked.

“As a matter of fact, I do, and spending time with you doesn't make the list,“ Noah said .“You’re confusing him. Flaunting your sexuality in his face like it is normal. You tempt him, try to seduce him, kiss him.” Noah spit out the last words. “No, you’re not good company for him.”

“Don’t you think that Luciano should choose for himself?” Reid asked. “Decide for himself who he get’s tempted or seduced by? Who he wants to kiss?”

“Not you”

”And yet he did”

“You don’t understand, Dr, Oliver,” Noah said, “you are dangerous for Luke, you are guiding him off the path that’s good for him.”

“You mean the path that you and his family have chosen for him or at least want him to follow?”

“He choose that path for himself. He has a finance”

“A fiancée he hasn’t slept with, who he‘s appalled to kiss”

“He told you that?”

“You sound surprised, Mr. Mayer. Did you believe to be the only one Mr., Grimaldi choose to confide in?”

“He … I… we …!” Noah was blushing.

“You can choose to be whatever you want to be, Mr. Mayer, I don’t care. Lie to yourself for as long as you like, but let Luciano make his own choice if you really care for him as much as you claim to do.”

“I don’t lie to myself.” Noah won back his composure. “I left my homosexual defect behind me, and so did Luke. Until you showed up.”

Reid laughed dryly. “I’m just here for two weeks, and it looks like I already left quite a mark. Too bad it isn‘t in a way I planned to do so.“ He shook his head. “But to get back to your point, Mr. Mayer, I can tell you that there is no such thing as someone who’s ex-gay. Only gay people, like you, lying to themselves.“ He paused for a moment, smirking to himself before he continued, “and possibly gay people who are dead. I guess you could call them ex-gay if you like morbid jokes.”

Noah turned to the door before he looked over his shoulder at Reid. “Keep your hands off Luke, Dr. Oliver. If I hear that you make one more inappropriate move on him, Damian Grimaldi will learn of it. You don’t won’t that to happen, believe me. He will turn form your benefactor to your worst enemy in no time if he hears that you are corrupting his son, and are trying to get in Luke’s pants.”


	15. Chapter 15

Luciano woke up the next day to bright sunshine.

He wasn’t sure at first if the last day had been more than a very confusing dream, but then he looked up and saw his grey suit hanging in front of his closet. The stains of grass and sperm still clearly visible on the fabric.

Not a dream then, but something he had to face in the light of day. After his conversation the previous night with Noah he had to consider his next move with Reid carefully.

His hair was still wet from the shower when he went downstairs for breakfast. He was surprised to find both Damian and Noah sitting at the table, talking over coffee, greeting him as he stepped into the room

“Morning dad, Noah. Did we have a meeting scheduled here for today that I forgot about?”

“No, Luciano, you didn’t miss anything. It’s just something Noah called me about last night. He will have to go on a trip for the weekend.”

“Is something wrong with one of our transports?”

“No,” Noah said with a big grin. “It’s something personal. Your father actually thinks it would be a great idea if you came along.”

“Oh?” Luciano looked confused from one to the other. “So where we’re going?”

”To a weekend course of an institution similar to the Kreeger Foundation”

”A re-definition camp?” Luciano asked

“Yes,” Damian said. “Just on a smaller scale. Only two days, but Noah thinks it would do you guys good to get a little re-freshening, and I happen to agree.

Luciano felt queasy to his stomach. He tried not to looked too shocked as he stared at his food. “Is that so?” he asked as indifferent as possible, while he wondered what Noah had told his father.

“I looked the program up because I found myself questioning my decisions of the past few years,” Noah said, looking intently at Luciano. “It will be good to remind myself of what’s important”

“I think it’s a great idea!” Damian agreed. “If Noah, who’s so happy with Maddie, can feel that way, it could happen to you too one day. And we don’t want that to happen, do we? After what we talked about last night I think you could use some time to think about your future and the priorities you have to choose for yourself the next year or two.

“Yes, that’s a great idea,“ Luciano agreed flatly. He had once again lost his appetite. “I’ll go and pack my stuff then”


	16. Chapter 16

Reid left Katie’s house around midday.

He had spent most of his night wondering about the visit from Noah the previous evening. When he had finally been able to fall asleep, he was plagued by nightmares of Damian Grimaldi breaking his hands in hundreds of ways.

And still, Reid’s first thought this morning had been of Luciano.

Reid wasn’t one to fall for guys easily. His relationships always started out rocky. Thinking back over the last few weeks he would probably have to say that it wasn’t different this time around. If this thing he had going on with Luciano could be called a relationship already.  
But just like the last two or thee times he’d let himself be talked into a steady thing, he was pretty sure, that it had been worth the hassle.

Luciano had needed some time until he’d agreed to let them start something together, but once he’s been willing, he had left the impression to be quite eager.

Eager enough to probably having Reid’s cloths ripped off his back right there at the pond if it hadn’t been early spring and the weather still far from inviting for nude wrestling or skinny dipping.

Reid picked up a sandwich for lunch at Al’s. Only as he was standing outside the diner again, he realized that he had no clue where he would find Luciano today.

It was shortly before noon on a Saturday. So Luciano would most likely be at home, still in bed.

Reid grinned to himself and let his mind wander for a moment. Imagining showing up at door and finding his way to Luciano’s room, crawling right into bed with him. He could wake Luciano up with kisses and touches, and then they could continue right were they left off yesterday, Luciano still warm and sleepy in Reid’s arms.

But most likely this wouldn’t be the case. Perhaps Luciano was at work in his office. Who knew what kind of working hours they had in the shipping business.

What Reid did know was how to make use of a big desk. Pushing Luciano on top of it, sweeping all documents to the floor, and fucking him right there.

Or Luciano could be out at the farm again. A pitchfork in his hands, shoveling horse shit into those little carts. Reid could see himself dragging him to the hayloft…

Yes, Reid needed to see Luciano right now. Continuing from where they stopped when dusk had fallen last night, and it had gotten too cold by the pond, lake, body of water that wasn’t a puddle thing, last night.

He decided to try his luck at Fairwinds.  
It was the first place that had come to his mind. Plus of all the erotic fantasies, that had gone trough Reid’s head in the past ten seconds, the one including a sleepy Luciano and a bed was his favorite.

On his way out to Fairwinds Reid managed to cool himself down a little. At one point he was even thinking about turning around, analyzing his sudden desire to see Luciano as a moment of insanity. It wasn’t like he really expected to end up in bed with Luciano in the middle of the day. Let alone only one day after Luciano had changed his mind about them out of the blue.

It was another surprise that the butler acted like Reid was an expected guest. The surprise got bigger when Reid was lead to Damian Grimaldi’s office rather than to Luciano.

“Doctor Oliver, it is good to see you again,” Damian greeted him. He offered Reid one of the chairs in front of his desk.

Reid sat down and realized that the chair wasn’t as comfortable as the sofa by the window. Was there a reason that Damian didn‘t use the same seating arrangement than last time?

“You came here to ask for Luciano?” Damian began

“Yes, I hoped I could talk to him today”

“I’m sorry, Doctor Oliver, but he isn’t home. You just missed him. He went on a business trip less than an hour ago.”

“I didn’t know that he wouldn’t be here today. He didn’t mention the trip the last time I saw him.”

“He couldn’t have mentioned it. It only came up early this morning that he had to go away for a couple of days.“ Damian smiled at Reid. “I noticed that you’re spending a lot of time with my son, Is there a reason to it? Perhaps something’s going wrong with the neuro wing? Is that why you need so much help from Luciano?”

“No, the building is right on time” Reid said. He was careful with his answer as he still had no clue where this was going. He didn’t like that he felt this way every time Damian Grimaldi asked to talk to him.

“Then what’s the reason behind all the time you and Luciano spend together?”

“We like each other’s company.”

“So you’re building up a friendship?”

“You could say that.” Reid frowned. “Why is this of interest to you, Mr. Grimaldi? Do you see it as a problem that your son spends time with one of your employees when it isn’t strictly about work?”

“No. I let Luciano have his friends wherever he finds them. While he has a lot of acquaintances, he could need some close and trustworthy friends.” Damian opened the bottom drawer of his desk and took out a dark red folder that he placed on the desk. “I’m just not sure if you can be one of those”

Reid felt a cold shiver run down his spine as Damian looked into his eyes.

“As you know, I have acquired some information about you at the clinic in Dallas”

Reid nodded.

“As it turned out one of the things your co-workers, as well as the people in your apartment building, agreed about, was that you’re not the kind of man who makes friends easily.”

“True,” Reid said. “I hope you didn’t plan to reveal some shocking news to me about myself. I know that I’m far from a social person, and that I usually don’t have a lot of friends. Mostly because most human beings don’t deserve to be called that. I don’t want to spend my free time surrounded by stupid idiots and morons. It’s enough that I have to handle them at work. Both as co-workers and as patients.”

“Yet you don’t seem to put that sentiment to my son”

“Luciano is different. A bit too cheery at times, but that’s just a personal opinion. Aside from that he’s surprisingly easy to like”

“I see,” Damian said and opened the folder, seemingly searching for some information inside it. Whatever it was, he didn’t pull it out right away once he found it.

“I guess it also helps that he’s precisely your type!”

Damian pulled a couple of pictures from the folder and spread them out for Reid to see. They were in full color and while a bit grainy they were still clear enough to make it impossible to miss what they showed.

Reid with some different men.

In the first picture he was holding a blond man. They were pressed up against a wall in a bar, kissing.

Reid could remember it as one of his last days in Dallas. He also remembered the rather spectacular blow job that followed in a bathroom stall shortly after the picture must have been taken.

The second picture showed Reid with another blond, this time both men sitting at the counter of a diner. The blond was leaning in very close and had his hand low on Reid’s back, a finger hooked into the belt loop of Reid’s jeans.

Reid gulped as he saw this picture. He didn’t need to have a photographic memory to remember that this picture must have been taken over a year ago during a conference he had attended in Vancouver.

He had known that Damian Grimaldi had checked him out before making the offer to run the new wing at Memorial. Reid just hadn’t suspected that he had him under surveillance for that long.

There were a couple more pictures that formed a time-line of his time with the Canadian.

One of them more falling than walking into a hotel elevator, both slightly drunk, kissing, and unable to keep their hands off each other. A night shot taken in a cinema, showing them making out rather than watching the stupid action flick they had decided on. Another picture even showing them going at it in the guy’s office, the shot taken with a telescope from the building across the street.

Reid tried to keep his face as neutral as possible as he looked up from the pictures and shrugged.

“So I like blonds. Probably even less of a secret than me not making friends easily,” he paused and smirked in the other man’s face, “but then, don’t most men like blondes best?”

Damian starred back at him. “And what about the fact that you like men?”

Reid shrugged again. “Sure, I belong to that smaller fraction that prefers blond men over blonde women, but still, not a secret!” He put emphasis to the last three words.

“I see that you don’t see anything wrong in that,” Damian said, as he himself looked over the pictures again. “Luciano hasn’t seen these pictures,” he added.

“Is this the part of the talk where you tell me that if I don’t do what you want me to, you’re going to show them to him? On what base exactly? That he’ll be disgusted by me? Afraid that I would press him up against a wall when he least suspects it, and rape him?” He chuckled dryly.

“I have to tell you, Mr. Grimaldi, whatever you planned with those pictures and the point where you’re going to show them to your son, you want tell him anything new. He knows that I am attracted to men. As I said, I don’t keep it a secret. So when we came to the topic of his upcoming wedding and he asked if I had a wife I answered him honestly. And he reacted neither disgusted nor afraid for his virtue. Which you can clearly see from the fact that he keeps up his best effort to keep this friendship between us blooming, despite the fact that I don’t like making friends, as we have already established in this discussion. And that we keep pointing out ad nauseam, because you still haven’t told me what point you are trying to make.”

“You are quite an insolent man, Doctor Oliver,” Damian pointed out.

“Yeah, I heard that before.” Reid rolled his eyes in annoyance.

„Then let me be as blunt as you are. Keep your hands away from Luciano!”

“Why do you suspect that I have even the most remote interest in your son, Mr. Grimaldi?”

“As we established, Doctor Oliver, he’s your type. And you are an impressive man. I guess it could be easy for someone like you to influence someone like Luciano. A young man, who isn’t always sure of himself.”

“So you fear that I could turn your son gay?” Reid laughed. “Despite what some people belive, you can’t turn anyone gay. Or straight for that matter. It’s not contagious. You’re either gay or you aren’t”

“People Luciano’s age are still prone to … shall we say … experimentation!”

Reid chuckled, not letting it on that Luciano had told him more about his past and confused identification. “If they experiment there is usually a reason behind it. It can be suppressed homosexuality or simply bisexuality. Again, nothing that happens without base. Something they were born with, not something that’s planted into them by the people they spend time with. And if they let anyone pressure themselves into an experiment, they turn from it quickly. In the best case they also turn away from the so called friends that pressured them into doing it in the first place.”

“You sound like a wise man”

“Well, being a genius will do that to you. That and the psychology course I had to take in med school.“ Reid got up from his chair. “Now that we established that I don’t plan to do anything to your son that will harm him, or that he isn’t willing to do, I would like to leave.”

“In a few moments, Doctor Oliver. I am sorry that I had to pressure you into this talk, and bring out those pictures. I just wanted to make sure that I will not let anything happen to Luciano.”

“Nobody here wants to harm him,” Reid answered. “Not intentionally”

“Good to know that we’re on the same page. I’m happy to see that you’re a reasonable man. We both don’t want to see harm come to Luciano. Or to you. And since I’m quite reasonable myself, I would like to offer you to just give me a call in case you find yourself lacking company.”

Reid lifted an eyebrow. “You’re not my type, Mr. Grimaldi”

Damian laughed and put a hand on Reid’s shoulder. “I wasn’t offering myself, as I am sure you well know. No, I was offering to find and pay you some company that’s to your liking. Male, young, blond.”

Reid laughed humorlessly. “I’m sure I can find myself my own company, without having to relay on your pimping skills, Mr. Grimaldi.”

“As you wish, Doctor Oliver, just keep the offer in mind, the next time you are thinking about Luciano a bit too much”


	17. Chapter 17

Luciano and Noah arrived at the camp less than two hours after leaving Oakdale. It was a lot simpler than the Camp at the Kreeger Foundation had been. There were no modern buildings looking more like a hotel than a camp, but rather a few rustic wooden cabins and huts spaced out in a forest clearing.

Once they had put their luggage to their assigned spaces they gathered with a group of other men in front of the main cabin.

A row of camp instructors were lined up in front of that cabin, spaced apart a couple of steps.

“You will pass the instructors one by one, and each of them will ask you a question about being a man and masculinity. Answer them as you see fit.“ Tim, the camp’s main instructor, said.

“What is a man?” the first instructor in the line asked as Luciano stepped up to him.

Luciano thought for a moment. Was this a test? Was there only one correct answer? Or how were answers graded? What did they want to hear? Something medical, like the existence of a Y chromosome? Or something general?

A thousand possible answers ran through Luciano’s head at once. What did he really believe himself?  
Memories from his childhood popped up. There was one constant presence that influenced his perception of men. His father Holden. Luciano always believed he would be like Holden once he was grown up. He knew there as only one right answer.

“A man is strong in body and will!”

The instructor nodded and asked him to move further along the line.

“What makes a man?” The second instructor asked.

“His ability to protect those he loves,” Luciano said. this answer coming to him faster

“How do you know you’re a man?” the third instructor asked as Luciano stepped up to him.

This was the hardest question so far. Had he ever felt like a man? Or just like a boy, sometimes older than his age, but mostly younger? Kept protected by his family? Did he ever really have to fight for himself? Or was there always someone there to take care of things for him?

Sure, he could always turn to his parents, all of them, or his grandmother Lucinda. Someone had always been there to listen to him, to guide him. But he also remembered the other things. The things they had told him but they had never told Faith or Natalie. Things they had let him do as well as things they didn’t allow him, that they let the girls get away with.

“Because I was raised as one!” he answered.

The consoler smiled at him and asked him to step forward to the fourth and final man in the line.

“Why are you here?” was his question.

Luciano was pretty sure that “because my father and my friend pressured me into it” was not a good answer. So he went with “Because I need to remember what it really means to be a man”

This time he was asked to step through the door and into the cabin.

The cabin held mostly a single room. Wide windows at one side letting sunlight in, coloring the wooden interior golden.

Some of the other men were already sitting in the chairs that formed a circle. Luciano settled for a chair that had the light falling through the windows warming his back.

Noah was one of the next entering the cabin and he choose a seat to Luciano’s left.

Slowly the room filled with men, and as almost every seat was taken, Tim stepped inside and took the final chair for himself.

“You all did well,” the instructor told the group. “There were no right or wrong answers you could have given to our questions about manhood and masculinity. They were simply asked so you had to think about yourself and about how you want to be. Use your answers and your thoughts during this workshop to set a goal for yourself. To remember why you are here, and what you want to change.”

Luciano looked at the other men in the circle. They all looked as pensive as he felt.

“Of course a two day self-discovery won’t change all your problems,” Tim continued, “but it can help you to see things in a new perspective. It can give you the necessary starting point of becoming a new person. To remember who you are, who you want to be, what you have to change about yourself. All we can do is help you to find your way from where you are now to where you want to be. We can’t make you stronger, more self assured or more determined if you don’t believe that this are your goals. We can’t help you if you don’t want to achieve those goals, or if you’re not ready to face your problems and find ways to work them out. You only can become better men if you work with, instead of against us!”

After his monologue he announced the beginning of the first group session of the camp, and left the choice of topic to the men who took part in the program.

Luciano looked expectantly from one man to the next, but no one seemed to be willing to be the first one to speak.

The silence grew uncomfortable as the minutes passed and the men shifted in their seats, some clearing their throats, some pulling around at their clothing, some scratching their skin while waiting for someone else to make the first move.

Luciano was growing antsy himself. As the eerie silence continued he wanted to jump up and scream at the others. Ask who had died, or why else no one was talking when they were supposed to. On the same time he didn’t want to be the first one to talk either.

He looked at Tim, who made no move to bring the conversation into action either.

At long last one of the guys spoke up.

He was a short man with curly hair and brown eyes behind thick glasses.

“Hi” he said to the group. “My name is Steve. I spent the last twenty or twenty five years as a gay man.” He played with the hem of his orange shirt then continued. “It made me depressed. Unhappy!” He took a deep breath. “I don’t want to be gay anymore.”

“I realized that I managed to get myself into a huge mess a couple of months ago. I had meet this man at work. Beautiful, tall, muscular. Very successful too. Unfortunately also my boss.” Steve forced out a chuckle.” You just don‘t go up to your boss and ask him out. And I was pretty sure he was straight anyway. All the men I‘m usually attracted to are straight. So I tried to get myself rid of this infatuation by calling him a “human sushi platter” whenever I was talking crap with my co-workers. I tried to degrade him. One day he heard and called me to his office. Not to hit on me or tell me how hot he thought I was. No, he told me that he wouldn’t stand for this harassment. So my infatuation with him lead to a warning in my file.”

Steve took a deep breath, before he continued in a pained voice.

“Then someone told me that they’d seen my boss in a gay bar, making out with another man. I saw it as my chance. I mean, if he really was interested in men then sure I could get him interested in me. After all, I heard how hot I was all the time from other men, right? So I dressed a bit more suggestive, left my shirt open a bit more than necessary and redoubled my efforts to flirt with him. But to no avail, he still didn’t notice me. So I started to make myself look good in other matters, not just my looks. I started to cheat a bit at work. Tell some lies to our costumers to get them to sign contracts, faked a few signatures and sales numbers. Well, you can guess that after a while, this got me the attention from my boss, just not in the way I wanted it. I got fired.” Steve sighed. “All just because I am a stupid gay man. I would never have behaved so stupid if my boss would have been a female. I don’t want to be gay anymore.”

Once Steve was done telling his story, silence fell over the room again.

Luciano took a deep breath and started to talk. Everything was better than sitting in this heavy silence again.

“I’m Luke.” he simply said. “My mother and my adoptive father had an on-and off relationship for most of my life. To make a very long story short, I started to drink as a teenager and almost killed myself doing so. And I still didn’t get enough love and attention from them. So I let myself believe that I was gay. I came out to my parents, and they reacted shocked and couldn‘t accept me. Thankfully my biological father came back into my life at the same time, and he sent me to a summer camp that was similar to this place here. I had a lot of time to find myself there and realize that I only claimed to be gay to get everyone’s attention. I leaned to deal with the fact that my parents have a strange kind to love for each other but that it works for them. I am old enough to take care of myself, and I don’t need their constant love and attention anymore, so I don’t need to pretend that I am gay to get it.“ He took a deep breath.

“Everything was fine for me in those last couple of years since I found myself again. I got good grades in College and now I work for my bio dad. Currently I’m in charge of building a new wing in a local hospital. But in the last few weeks, I got distracted.” Luciano looked down at his fidgeting hands.

“You see…, Zoe, my fiancée, is wanting to get our marriage plans finalized. She wants us to start a family soon. So when a gay man made advances on me recently, I let myself be distracted. “

Luciano looked back up, gathering strength from what he was about to say. “I guess I am afraid about what the future as a husband and father holds for me. So when the chance offered itself, I once again choose to hide behind the safety of telling myself that I’m gay. I’m once again hurting everyone just because I don’t want to be a grown up and take the responsibility that comes with it.”

After Luciano finished, movement came into the group, and one after the other told their story.

Julian told about how he hurt his family by prostitution and the desire for a gender-reassignment.

George, an elderly gentleman, remembered getting arrested for hanging around in the wrong establishments in the sixties, and he had to leave his home-town after it became common knowledge. He told them of failed marriages and a suicide attempt.

Noah told of his time as an army brat who didn’t even know about the existence of homosexuality till his father accused him of being a fag.

Another man around the same age as Luciano and Noah told how his mother found him in bed with a neighbors, and how since then she made him pray twice a day for his sins. That they were too poor for him to get to a therapy like this in the past, but how the whole village had pitched in after the minister told them about Daniel’s sin, and that he could be cured with their help.

Once everyone had a say, Tim stood up. “You all have a common problem!” he told them. “But it’s not your attraction to men, as you might think right now. That’s just a result of your real problem. You all have been dominated by women in the past. Your mothers, your wives, the female teachers in your past, the female influences in your present. They have taken the masculine power from you. They have made you weak.”

He looked each and every man in the circle in the eye, before he continued.

“You are like Jack, in the tale of Jack and the Beanstalk.”

The group started to murmur with confusion, not knowing what a fairy-tale had to do with their attraction to men. Luciano fully agreed with the others.

In front of the group Tim just smiled.

“You may have never noticed it, but the story is full with coming-of-age symbolism. Fatherless Jack has lived in the safe, feminine world under his mother’s care. The old man in the village represents ancient tribal elders who helped boys transitioning into manhood, the seeds given to Jack represent both his sperm and the masculine potential for creation. Like most women, Jack’s mother doesn’t understand the importance of the seeds, so she chucks them out of the window. It ends with her sending Jack to bed without supper.“

Tim looked once again around the men who were now listening to him in awe.

“Much like Jack you’ve been held back by women. We will continue later today with single sessions. Until then I want each of you to think about the one woman in your life that was responsible for you becoming as broken as you are today. The one woman that repressed you so much that you believe it preferable to be with men, despite all the danger and shame that lies down that path.”


	18. Chapter 18

After dinner it was time for Luciano’s single session with Tim

“So, tell me Luke, have you thought about it? Why are you afraid of women? Who is responsible for it?”

“I don’t really know,” Luciano started, “but I guess ... it may have to do with my grandmother Lucinda. She’s very powerful, and very rich too.”

“Is she divorced?” Tim asked

“Yes,” Luciano answered puzzled.

“So she got rich and powerful because she took it all away from men”

“No, no, no,” Luciano hurried to say, “it’s not like that. She worked hard, still does, and didn’t get her money because of her divorces. She worked for it herself, she’s really impressive that way.”

“Why do you get so defensive now, Luke?”

“Why shouldn’t I? You accuse one of the people who’s always stood up for me, no matter what, to be a gold digger, who uses men to get to their money, when all that ever happened to her was that she didn’t have a of lot luck with love”

“I see,” Tim said, and Luciano knew that he didn’t believe him.

“What about your mother?” Tim asked next. “Did she ever make you feel powerless?”

“No, she’s done a lot for me. Including some things no one should have to do for anyone, not even their own child.”

“But Luke,“ Tim interrupted him, “You said yourself, your parents didn’t always have a happy marriage.”

“Sure, they’re not perfect, but that they found together time and time again just shows how great their love is. They need each other. That‘s a sign of true love.”

“You have a wrong impression there, Luke.” Tim eyes bore into Luciano. “If your mother really respected your father, you and the rest of your family, she would never have left.”

He tapped his pen against his stack of papers. “By leaving your father, by getting married to other men she undermined your father’s masculinity. She showed that she can exist without him, that she doesn’t need him. That a woman can choose not to be with the man who takes care of her and her family.”

“But that isn’t true,” Luciano said.

Tim just sadly shook his head. “She showed you a picture of wrongness. She prevented you to see how a marriage between a man and a woman works. How a man is supposed to take care of the family and bring home the money, while the woman is supposed to take care of the children and the house. It’s her responsibility to have the meal on the table on time, and the children dressed up and behaving when the man comes home from a hard days work. Luke, that is how it is supposed to be, and you became a broken person because you didn’t get to experience this.”

“But that view of a family is out of date for decades.”

“Sure, Luke, women try to tell us that they have more rights now, and sometimes that may even work out. But it only works if a man can let that happen without acting broken. Clearly you’re no such man. You’re one of those who has to take charge of his family or you will never overcome your problem with your attraction to the wrong people.

“I’m not sure if…”

“Believe me Luke, it will be the best for you if you trust me. I see your problems. You said, that you’re distracted by that man since your fiancée started to talk about setting a date for the wedding and about starting a family.”

Luciano nodded.

“See, there is another woman trying to run your life for you. And you’re too afraid to tell her off, so you just roll over and let her step all over you. Let her make all decisions while you’re hiding behind that new man. By giving your woman so much power over your future you got yourself to believe that it would be better to run away and give into your homosexual attraction again. That‘s not good for you, Luke, and deep down, you know this yourself.”

Tim leaned forward in his chair and reached for Luciano’s hands.

“Don’t hide anymore Luke. Put your foot down. When you go home tomorrow, go and talk to your fiancée right away. Tell her that things will have to go your way. That you can get married, but that you will be the one who will set the date and the location. That you will be the one who will have the final say about the menu and the honeymoon destination.”

“Shall I also take charge of the flowers and the color scheme or would that be too gay?” Luciano asked sardonically.

“Don’t make fun of this, Luke. We are talking about your life here, your future, your happiness. Don’t have everything ruined for you just because you feel too afraid to tell your girlfriend that once you’re married she will have to quit work. That she will have to stay home and prepare dinner for you”

“She doesn't need to do that. We have house staff. And wee run a big company. We need her help there. She‘s a good business woman.”

“Again, Luke, this may work for some people, but nor for men like us. We need to be in charge, we need those traditional gender roles if we want to stay on our path, want to make our parents and families proud, if we want to build our own families to love and support.”

Luciano pressed his face into his hands, before putting his longish bangs back behind his ear. “I really don’t feel comfortable with this advice.”

“It takes some getting used to at first, I will admit that without hesitation, but it is worth the price. What you feel when you look in the mirror and see a real man looking back at you, not only the illusion of one, then you will know that you‘ve done the right thing.” Tim smiled at Luciano.

"So how are things in a more personal manner, between you and your fiancée?" he asked next.

"I don't think we need to talk about what I think you’re asking about."

"I think we need to talk about exactly that just because you don't want to talk about it.“ Tim said. "Even more so since you can’t call it by it's name."

"Neither do you"

"I'm the instructor here, I don't need to call it by name"

"If you absolutely must know," Luciano said, with a long suffering sigh, "Zoe and I have never slept together. Is that good enough for calling it by name?"

"It is.” Tim reassured him. ”It just is a real problem that you’ve never done so. It's a very important step on this road to manhood.“ Tim made a note on his files. "What’s the problem, Luke? Does she want to wait till you’re married?"

"No!" Luciano could feel how he turned red, "I just don't feel like it."

"Just get over yourself Luke, you want to be a success, don't you"

Luciano nodded.

"Then you know what you have to do!”

"What if she thinks I’m horrible at it? What if I can’t make her happy in bed"

"Luke, just remember what I said to you a few minutes ago."

"Ehm…” Luciano was thinking back trying to point it down. "About me being in charge?"

"Yes! You need to be in charge in that aspect as well. You have to show her that you are the man.” Tim moved to the edge of his seat, leaning in closer to Luciano. “Make it a rule. Set a date and a time. Once a week she has to go to bed with you and open her legs, and it will be all about you.” He pointed both his fingers at Luciano.

“She has to understand that it is all about your pleasure, not hers. Remember, you’re not the kind of man who can take care of the feelings of his wife. Not yet. Not for the next couple of years. Perhaps never. You have to be who you can be. Sure, sometimes this does not fit with how society tells us it should be, but we have to treat a woman the traditional way, despite some people scowling and frowning at us. They don't really know us, they don't really understand what it means to be a broken man, to be unsure in your masculinity."

Luciano looked down at the hands in his lap. He wasn't feeling too comfortable in this therapy session. The things Tim told him went against so much he had heard about being a good man, from both Holden and Damian. Could both of his fathers be so wrong about what made a man?

"While we are on the topic," Tim interrupted Luciano s thoughts, "when was the last time you had sexual relations to another man?"

"I haven't."

"Don't lie to me Luke!"

“I don’t lie about this. I was never intimate with a man. There are just these two men I kissed, unless you mean that"

Tim made another note on his file. "If that really is the case we have at least one positive point to focus on. If you never acted on your sexual brokenness, then there is at least no danger of comparisons between lying with a man and a woman. It will make it easier on you."

Tim took out a business card from one of the stacks of his desk.

"It is really important now that you get that little problem behind you. Make your fiancée yours in every way, sleep with her and bring that behind you, before it can turn into an even bigger mental road block. This is the business card of a doctor in Chicago. He knows about the problems of the men who come to this retreat, and he understands our mission. Visit him as soon as possible and he will give you a prescription for some medical help, to make it easier to get more excited when it is time"

Luciano looked at the business card with raised eyebrows, turning it over on the tips of two fingers.

"Are you seriously advising me to get a prescription for Viagra?"

"Whatever helps, we have to use it"


	19. Chapter 19

Katie was sitting cross-legged on the sofa in their living room, starring at Reid as he was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen

“You know, we have a dish washer!”

“I know,” he replied and kept on scrubbing on a plate.

“Then why are you doing this?”

“Because it helps me relax?”

“That’s an odd way to relax,” she said. “Even more so if we keep in mind that you don’t do your bed or that you can’t operate the washing machine”

“Perhaps I do the dishes by hand because I am just as clueless with the dishwasher?” he offered.

“I don‘t think so!” She put a couple of fingers to her lower lip. “Don’t you tell everyone you meet that you’re a genius, even if they don’t want to hear it?”

“I can’t work or read medical journals all the time, as much as I would like that. I’d like to play chess, but it just looses all it’s allure if there’s no one around who, at least, can give me a challenge, if they can’t beat me.” He put the plate into the drying rack at his side. “What did you expect I would do to relax after a day where I had to safe a guy who got kicked in the head by some wannabe ninja?”

Katie laughed. “Don’t tell me Dusty is at it again. That sounds just like him.”

Reid looked at her like she had said something only someone from Oakdale would say.

“Anyway,“ she change the topic in haste. “I’d guess you’d do something like mid-night yoga to relax”

“Oh, I like yoga!” Reid answered.

“See, I knew you did”

“Yeah, it provides endless entertainment to mock people who sit with their limbs tied into knots while chanting stupid Asian stuff”

Katie groaned. “You’re hopeless”

“If you say so,” Reid said as he put the last knife aside and dried his hands off. He came over and sat down next to her, pulling one of the throw pillows to his chest.

“And now you’re moping!” Katie said after watching him for a minute or two.

“I’m not moping!”

Katie put a hand to his shoulder. “Why don’t you tell me what’s wrong with you today?” she asked. “Something wrong with you and that charming young man you mentioned a few days back? The one who made you so unnaturally happy until now?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Reid glared at Katie, “and I wasn’t unnaturally happy!”

“And I don’t want to shut up about it!” Katie said. “So?”

Reid threw the pillow against the apartment door, trying to provoke Katie to leave him alone, but she just scooted closer.

“Tell me! Or I’m going to hug you!” she warned him.

“Don’t you dare!” he warned her.

“Watch me!” She opened her arms and flung herself at him, hugging him and his pillow long and hard.

Reid groaned but finally realized that he didn‘t have a chance. “Until I came to this fucked-up town I had a good life,” he started ominously. “I didn’t need anyone”

“But now you want someone,” Katie prompted as she slowly let him go. “You want this guy!”

“Yeah!” Reid nodded.

“But he doesn’t want you?”

“Oh, he wants me!“ Reid assured her, “but he has to pretend we’re back in High School, so he’s going hot and cold on me all the time. I never know how he’ll react when I see him. And now his father…”

“His father?” Katie interrupted him, laughing, “You sure you’re young man’s really out of High School?”

Reid got up. “Why did I even tell you all that? And since we’re already at the rhetorical questions, why I am still bothering with this hellhole of a town?” He went to pick up the cushion and threw it at Katie who caught it without effort. “I should be packing and get on the next plane back to Texas,” he said before walking off into his room.


	20. Chapter 20

The next day at the Camp they had another group session, where Tim and the other instructors showed them how to say no.

Luciano had to shake his fist and say no to advanced of strange men.

He had to say no in a situation where his mother or his future wife wanted to meddle in his life. Show them who the man in the house was.

And he had to say no to any inappropriate thought in his head.

For one morning it was all no. No. No. no, no, no!

Then they said yes to a quick lunch before heading back home, all the men promising to themselves as well as to each other to stay true, to stay straight.

“Now that was interesting , wasn’t it?” Noah asked as he drove them back. He seemed more cheery than in a long time.

“Hmm,” Luciano mumbled non-committal.

“I for one am assured again that I made the right decision. No more men. Just my lovely Maddie. Sure, I’ve let her have a bit too much independency, but I am sure that I can guide her to respect me a bit more. Tim gave me a few great tips in our single session, how to get her back under control without having to tell her about my past misguidance with my sexuality.”

“Hmmm,” Luciano repeated. He was too deep in his own thoughts to listen to Noah’s ramblings.

He didn’t agree on all accounts with the things he had been told by Tim and the other instructors but he wanted a future with Zoe as his wife. To have that he would have to sleep with her. He decided to try it by himself without hiding behind medical remedies. It would be without meaning if he didn't at least try to do it without outside help.

He would go for it this night, and only call that doctor in Chicago if he failed.

Once home he put his things away and took a shower.

While he lathered himself up, he decided to at least try and get a little excited before going to Zoe’s room.

As he reached between his legs he tried to use the same method he’d used for years to keep his thoughts away from men. He tried not to imagine any erotic situation, instead just concentrated on the movement of his hand and his feelings.

It worked for the first few moments, but as his excitement grew his concentration waned.

Reid sneaked into his mind, and once there, Luciano couldn’t get his image out again.

In his mind the door to the shower opened and Reid come up behind him. His warmth radiating against Luciano’s back before they even touched.

Once their bodies pressed together, it was only a matter of seconds until Reid was as wet and slippery as Luciano. Reid’s hand spreading foam over Luciano’s chest and belly while he pressed a kiss to the back of Luciano’s neck.

With great effort Luciano removed his hand from himself and banished Reid from his mind. He’d accomplished what he’d set out to do, he was fully hard now.

What came next had nothing to do with indulging in dangerous fantasies. He had a duty to perform.

He turned the water off and toweled himself off as fast as possible, occasionally rubbing and squeezing his cock to remain as hard as possible before slipping into a pair of loose grey sweat pants. Then he left his room and hurried to Zoe’s.

***

“Luciano?” Zoe looked up at him with surprise as he entered her room. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She switched off the TV and sat up straight against the headboard.

“I missed you while I was away” he said, inwardly shuddering at how unconvincing and stupid he sounded.

“Oh?” she asked, her eyebrows raised.

He swallowed, trying to keep his nerves in check, “Yes, I was thinking about you the whole weekend.” It wasn’t a lie! They had made him do so after all.

With a seductive smile Zoe lifted the edge of her blanket. “Then why don’t you come closer?” she invited him.

Luciano lowered himself next to her with feigned confidence. Within moments Zoe was pressed up to him, her hands wandering over his naked chest. He put his arms around her, pulling her closer, feeling the silky fabric of her nightshirt against his skin. Luciano could feel the hem of the flimsy thing riding up her thigh as she rubbed herself against his leg.

“You have no idea how long I waited for you to come to me all by yourself,” she cooed, her voice growing dark with desire.

Her hands slithered over his naked back and the thin layer of sweat that had already built up there since his shower. Her nails scratched at his skin, and he tried to ignore the sting of her claws. As she reached his hair, she pulled him in for a kiss.

Luciano was surprised at himself as he retuned it with growing hunger. He was certain it was the best kiss he’d ever shared with Zoe. He could do this, he knew it now.

Her hand that wasn't in his hair now reached for his ass, and she pulled him down and slung her legs around his hips. pressing her crotch against his. Luciano was rapidly recovering any hardness he had lost between his room and her bed.

"Oh Luciano" she moaned out as a shudder ran through her. "I waited for this so long"

He closed his eyes and reached for her breasts, pushing the dark material of her night shirt out of his way. He could feel her hard nipples under his fingers, so he lowered his face down to suck at one of them. He remembered how she’d loved him doing this the last time.

The vice like grip of her legs around his hips tightened. She pressed herself against him harder, again and again.

"Yes, Luciano, please!" she moaned while humping him

As Luciano tried to please her as best as he could, unbidden images again flooded his mind.

He was back at the pond, having Reid all over him, kissing and touching. Luciano remembered how it felt to have their cocks rubbing against each other while trapped in their pants. How it felt to have Reid all hard and wanting against him. He tried to will the same feeling into existence now as Zoe writhed against him.

It was working. The intoxicating feeling of arousal was going to his head and he could feel the fabric of his pants sticking to his cock where it had gotten wet with drops of his pre-come.

As if on cue eager hands reached for his pants, pushing them down and out of the way, freeing his aching length.

Luciano arched his back as he felt the grip of a hand that wasn't his around his cock for the first time.

It felt good, hell, it felt fucking fantastic. Why had he refused to let this happen before?

Right at this moment it didn’t matter who was with him in reality or in imagination. It wasn't important if it was Zoe or Reid, or even Noah or some random person from the street. It was all about the lust he felt, the need to sink his cock into a willing, warm body, giving him pleasure, giving him something to rub himself against, to give him sweet, sweet desperately needed release.

And moments later he had his wish fulfilled.

There was a wet and warm and giving gap, welcoming him as he pushed, letting him in balls deep.

He didn't want to hold himself back no, he just wanted to push himself in further and further, and harder and harder.

He didn't want to think this was the wrong person, the wrong moment, the wrong everything.

It was fucking, it was losing himself. It were just a couple of speedy movements, intended to give him pleasure, to bring him release.

Afterwards he needed a couple of moments to regain awareness of where he was, of who he was with, of what he had just done.

“Luciano?” Zoe called after him, as he once again ran from her rooms.


	21. Chapter 21

It was almost a week later, during a meeting with the architect, when Luciano came across Reid again.

Reid didn’t look at him once during the two hours, let alone talk to him directly, but still managed to insult him in every other sentence.

“Reid,“ Luciano finally called after him as Reid was about to leave the meeting room together with the architect.

“What do you want, Mr. Grimaldi?” Reid asked, without turning as he stopped.

“I’d like to know why you’re so distant today. And what happened to calling me Luke?”

“I tried to see you last weekend,” Reid answered. “You weren’t home.”

“I had to attend … some business!” Luciano explained. “It came up suddenly. I’m sorry I couldn’t inform you. But it wasn‘t like we had a date anyway. We just made out on the pond once, it isn’t like we’re together!”

Luciano tried to ignore the twisting in his guts. It was only a couple of days since that moment by the pond, but everything had changed once again. He hated how his life had become unpredictable. “What happened at the pond, it was a mistake, I am sorry!”

Reid finally turned and fell into one of the chairs around the big table, shaking his head. “Are we seriously back at this? It’s getting tiresome!”

“I’m sorry,” Luciano repeated. “I’m sorry I ever gave you the impression that I’d changed my mind.”

“I don’t get it Luke,” Reid said as he at long last looked at him. “I want you and you want me. Yet you still hide behind what everybody else tells you to do. Who to be”

“And what‘s it with you always looking down when someone tells you some uncomfortable truth? Are you that fascinated with the gravity of your balls? ” Reid scolded Luciano after taking in his defeated posture.

“It’s my choice…” Luciano started.

“No,” Reid interrupted him, “it’s not a choice you have, it’s just …”

He let out a heavy sigh and threw his arms up in the air. “You know what, Luke? Yeah, it’s a choice. And you obviously want to make that choice. Fine! Make it! But without me. I'm done with this shit. I give up and let you and your delusion have a happy life together.”

Luciano reached out to him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Can we at least stay ..."

"Don't even try to finish that sentence, Mr. Grimaldi, or I can't guarantee anything!" Reid almost yelled as he got up from the chair. "No, we can't stay friends. I don't want to be friends with you. And if that makes me look like the typical gay stereotype to you, then so be it. I'm done with this! I’m done with you!”

Luciano grabbed his arm, preventing Reid from walking out. "Reid?” he begged, "Do you really want to live that life? This is Oakdale, not some big city. You can't just alienate all the people who try to be nice to you. One day you’ll have the whole town against you, and what will you do then'?“

"In case you haven’t noticed yet, I don’t want mindless, empty conversations with random strangers. I am not you. I don’t need to be friends with everyone. I don't even want to be in this hole in the wall, one horse town, so why would I care?"

"Then why are you here?" Luciano asked. "Did my father hire you to test me? Is that it?"

“Does it always all have to be about you?” Reid rolled his eyes. "I refuse to be used, Mr. Grimaldi. Not by you and not by your father. As to why I’m here? Because I was offered the job opportunity of ... well, not my life, but defiantly of the moment. Sure, I will run my own neuro-facility at a big hospital one day, but it will need time. I have to wait until all those old guys croaked or left before I get an offer. It doesn’t matter how brilliant I am, or that I’m bringing the whole field of neurosurgery in a new area. The idiots in charge still give jobs like that to doctors only half as good as me simply because they’ve been born decades before me.”

Reid clasped Luciano’s shoulders for emphasis. “This may be the last place I would choose to be but Oakhell has offered me the possibility to make a difference. That’s why I am here. But it doesn’t mean that you or your father own me. I’m still the one who makes the final decision when it comes to this wing or when it comes to cutting into someone’s brain. Just like you can’t tell me what to in my private life!”

Reid pushed hard against Luciano’s shoulders, shoving him back a few steps. "I'm not a toy for you rich people. You could tempt me with the offer of this job, but you can't play me. Not as a doctor and not as a man. You won’t be able to dangle yourself in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey. Either you choose to be with me or we’re leaving whatever this is behind us. Right here, right now. I don't play games, and I have no interest in starting to do so now. I don't do drama.”

Reid's hands had never left Luciano's shoulders during his rant and now he used his grip to give Luciano another push until the younger man was pressed up against the wall. Reid used the weight of his body to hold him in place as he pressed a hard kiss to Luciano's mouth.

"I'm sorry you choose this, Luke. I don't do relationships easily. Hell, I don't do friendships easily, but for you I would have tried. For you I could really have fallen. And that’s why I can't play push and pull with you. I'd get in too deep too fast.”

Reid raked his fingers through his curls. “I'm sorry it came to this Luke, because I have the feeling that we could have been good together."

Reid let Luciano go and turned away.

Just to have Luciano's hand grip his wrist. "Stay!"

"Let go, Mr. Grimaldi," Reid said without turning back. He took another step away but Luciano just gripped him harder and pulled him back.

"I mean it Luciano, let go!" Reid said again, harder, but to no avail.

Reid took a deep breath as he made up his mind, then quickly turned on his heels and forced Luciano around as well. With two forceful steps he had Luciano up against the wall again, this time face first.

"Let .. let me .. let me go! Luciano pressed out, but Reid only pushed against him harder.

"No, Luke, I don't want to let go. You didn't want too either just moments ago, remember?"

Luciano whimpered.

The sound of it did incredible things to Reid.

He buried his face in the back of Luciano's neck and took a deep breath, taking in Luciano’s scent. "What is it with you, Luke? Why do you have to drive me crazy?" Reid mumbled into his skin.

Luciano shivered, and moments later his ass pressed back wantonly into Reid's crotch.

"Oh no, no, no, Luke, don't do this," Reid said, and mentally added a "to me“.

Luciano only whimpered again in response, his skin breaking out in goose bumps were Reid’s breath hit it.

"I want you," Luciano said, his voice but a whimper. "I don't want to want you. But I can't help it. I think of you all the time."

"Oh Luke," Reid said, helplessly pressing kisses to the other man's neck.

"I …," Luciano started again, "I can't even ...", he gulped. He shivered as he moved his backside against Reid's rapidly hardening cock. "You need to know… I began to sleep with Zoe," he admitted, his voice shaking even more than his body, “I go to her every night now.”

Reid's fingers almost ripped the cloth of Luciano's dress shirt as his grip on Luciano’s body tightened.

"So you made your choice, haven't you?" he asked harshly, and wondered if this sinking feeling, this hard punch to his chest, was what people called the moment they could feel their heart break.

It was as brutal a feeling as they made it look in all those silly TV specials. Reid wasn’t to keen on it. He didn’t want to know this feeling now, or ever again.

"You don't understand," Luciano’s voice was thick with tears. "I do it, but I don't like it .,. well, aside from the purely physical, when I'm overwhelmed with lust… but after ... you know ... it's always like waking up from some dream… when you realize that you haven't really woken up but fallen into a nightmare."

"And that is supposed to make me feel better?“ Reid realized that his cock had gone flaccid in a matter of moments, even with Luciano’s ass still rubbing circles against his crotch.

"No!" Reid could hear the urgent desperation in Luciano‘s voice. "You don't get it!"

"What don’t I get, Luke?"

"That from the moment I step into her room, I try to ignore that it’s Zoe. That I try to imagine that it’s ... that it is ... someone else."

"Who are you imagining?" Reid asked, wile a s mall flicker of hope reignited in his heart, in his balls.

“I imagine that it’s … you!”

“And what do I do, Luke?”

“Everything!” Luciano breathed. “You take my cloths off, have your hands all over me…”

Luciano’s breathless voice was enough to get Reid’s body interested again. He pressed against him again, shoving Luciano harder into the wall. He groaned into the back of Luciano’s neck as Luciano wantonly pressed back, his hips never having stilled.

“And then, Luke? What do I do then?”

“You kiss me, caress me, and you grip my cock and …”

“And what, Luke?”

“You know…”

“C’mon Luke,“ Reid coaxed, “you can say the words. I know you want to say them.“ He teased Luciano’s earlobe with his tongue. “Tell me what you want“

Luciano gulped, trying to bring the words out his too dry throat. “You stroke my cock,” he finally managed. “You kiss it, suck it down your throat!”

“Yeah, Luke” Reid answered breathily. “I would do just that if you‘d let me!”

Reid’s hand wandered down to the front of Luciano’s pants, easily finding his cock and giving it a hard squeeze through the fabric.

“You want this, don’t you, Luke?” Reid asked, needing the assurance before he was taking this any further.

“Yes,” Luciano hissed between moans.

“Good!” Reid dragged the word out as he shoved his hand underneath Luciano’s shirt. He let his fingers ghost over Luciano’s quivering stomach and up to his hard nipples. His other hand went to Luciano’s jaw, dragged it back and kissing him hard.

“Time for you to learn what it means to get fucked. Time for you to realize that a real man is what you need the most. I promise, you’ll never feel better than while a hard cock fills you up.”

Reid opened Luciano’s pants and dragged them down, along with his underwear. Then he began to pry Luciano open as good as he could without the help of any lube.

Luciano whimpered.

Reid stilled his fingers, second-guessing if this was the right time and place.

Luciano whimpered again. „Want you now!“

Unable to ignore Luciano’s needy request, Reid fumbled himself out of his cloths, and moments later he was shoving himself deep inside Luciano.

At first Luciano was overwhelmed by intense pain. For a second he wondered if it wouldn’t be better to just stick with the half-hearted sex he’d had with Zoe, when sex with a man felt like getting torn apart.

Luciano felt himself getting slammed up against the wall, and he recovered from the momentarily shock, his fingers trying to find purchase. His ass was slowly getting used to the invasion and it started to feel good to be filled like this, to be stretched around Reid‘s cock.

“This is it! This is really happening!” the voice inside Luciano’s head repeated over and over again as his body countered every thrust by Reid‘s hips. He was getting fucked by a man. Just like he always wanted when he was younger, before his father, his therapist and he himself made him believe that it was unnatural and wrong.

Just that it wasn’t any man fucking him. It was Reid… Reid … Reid!


	22. Chapter 22

“So did you manage to get Zoe into bed, just like you planned at the camp?” Noah asked as they sat down at Java. Noah had been busy working on a project for Damian, so it was the first time since their return from camp that Luciano got a chance to talk to his friend.

“Gee, Noah, don’t be so eager to hear what happens when I’m behind closed doors with Zoe .Otherwise I could get the impression you’d get off on it.”

Noah frowned at him. “No need to get all high and mighty, Luke. It isn’t like I want a play by play. A simple yes or no answer suffices.”

Luciano turned his cup in his hands. “Yes, I went to her bed”

“And?” Noah inquired, ”any problems?”

“I managed to function well enough, if that is what you’re asking about”

“Yes!” Noah shouted a bit too loud for Luciano’s comfort. “I knew you could handle it. I’m so proud of you.“

Luciano squirmed in his seat and felt the slight sting from the previous day’s encounter. He wanted to talk to someone about what had happened. Noah was the only one that Luciano could open up too, but he wasn’t sure if Noah would like to hear what he had to say. So Luciano ripped a paper napkin in long, thin stripes as he searched for the right words. “How does it work for you and Maddie?” he finally asked, hoping that the right words would come to him, if he just stayed on the topic.

Noah chuckled. “The traditional way! We get together, turn out the lights and do it!” He squinted at Luciano in confusion. “How else?”

“That’s not exactly what I wanted to know,“ Luciano answered, “I know this may sound strange, and may be a bit too personal, but I mean, what do you feel? What do you think about when you’re with her?”

“You’re thinking too much, Luke.” Noah laughed. “Just like always. You shouldn’t try to think during sex. You’re just supposed to move till you’re done.”

“What about Maddie?” Luciano asked. “How do you touch her? What’s she feeling?”

Noah shrugged. “I let her touch me if she feels like it. Usually she does. Its nice. As for her, she’s easy so excite. A few touches here and there and she’s ready for the rest.”

Now it was Luciano’s turn to look at Noah in confusion.. “Shouldn’t it be more than that? More than just being able to perform and finish?”

Noah laughed dryly. “You’re such a romantic, Luke. Don’t believe in all the books you read or movies you watch. That whole fireworks and seeing stars thing isn’t real. It’s just an illusion to make love look like more than it is. It helps to sell the product. It’s as simple as that.”

“But yesterday, I did see stars and fireworks,” Luciano said under his breath.

As Noah’s face broke into a wide grin, Luciano knew he had heard him. “Whoa, Luke, you stallion! You really got off like that? Now you really must want to kick your won ass for waiting that long, don’t you?”

Luciano was sure the grin he forced on his features looked more like a grimace. “There’s just one small problem,” he admitted, “When it happened, I wasn’t with Zoe “

“What?”

Luciano could feel how everyone in Java turned their head as Noah’s fist connected with the table top.

“Luke, tell me, you didn’t sleep with you-know-who!”

“No, Noah, I didn’t sleep with Lord Voldemort. You can say his name, you know, he’s only fictional. Just like all those fireworks and stars.” Luciano rolled his eyes in annoyance. He started to regret talking to Noah about this after all. He should have known he would get a reaction like this.

“This isn’t a joking matter, Luke. Don’t think you can change the topic just like that.” Noah scowled at him, “So did you sleep with that guy? That doctor?”

“His name’s Reid, and yes, it was with him, when all this incredible… stuff happened. “ Luciano was frustrated, wishing he knew how to describe what he’d experienced the day before. How could he make Noah understand how it was to be this fulfilled, this desired, this … owned by a person, a man at that?

“Luke, oh Luke! You really shouldn’t have done that! You made such great progress at the retreat. “ Luciano could see all the disappointment in Noah’s gaze as he slowly shook his head. “And now you’ve thrown it all away for a meaningless little fuck. “

“Didn’t you listen, Noah? It wasn’t a meaningless little fuck. It was passion and connection and intimacy all rolled into one. It was just as I always hoped it would be when I’d fall in love.”

“Do you hear yourself?” Noah asked, rattling the table enough to spill coffee from his already half empty cup. “You talk about falling in love with a stranger. With a man for heaven’s sake.”

“The person who should hear himself here, is you, Noah” Luciano’s voice was now also rising, bringing even more attention to their conversation.

“Tell me Noah, can you honestly say that you have no problems keeping your attention at Maddie all the time? That in all this time you have never thought about a man while sleeping with her? I don’t think so. Deep down you want to get your ass fucked just as desperately as you wanted it years ago. You‘re just too much of a hypocrite to admit it. And on top of it all, you have no remorse in hurting Maddie with your lies.”

Neither Luciano nor Noah noticed the beefy man in the red flannel shirt man coming to their table with the heavy steps until he was leaning over them.

“Hey guys, would you mind to keep it down? There are children here! They don’t need to hear you homos argue about that kind of sick stuff in public.”

Noah got up, the force of his move sending his chair crashing to the floor. His shoulder bumped into the farmer to push him out of the way, but the hateful words from his mouth were directed at Luciano rather than the redneck.

“I don’t know you anymore, Luciano. If you want to be a disgusting faggot, fine, but keep me out of this! I changed!”


	23. Chapter 23

Noah stormed into Damian’s office without as much as a glance at the secretary. There could be no meeting important enough to be more important than what Noah had to tell his boss. But as it turned out Damian was alone in his office anyway.

”We have a gigantic problem with Luciano!” Noah was still seething with anger from his conversation with Luciano.

“Noah, my son,” Damian tried to calm him while he pushed the files he’d been working on away. “Breath, then tell me what Luciano has done to upset you so much. Has he chewed on the back of your pencils again?”

“No, he…” Noah circled in front of Damian’s desk, still trying to find the right words.

“Have you noticed how much time Luke spends with Doctor Oliver?” he finally managed to ask.

“Yes, I noticed. And I have already talked to Doctor Oliver about the matter. We agreed that it would be better for his career to keep his distance.”

“Looks like the so called good Doctor has changed his mind, or didn’t fully agree with you, or misunderstood you or shit like that”

“How so?“ Damian looked at Noah expectantly, encouraging him to continue.

“Luke just told me that he slept with the guy. Claimed that it was better and all that than being with Zoe, and that he thinks it was a mistake to delude himself into a straight life. And Luke thinks he’s falling in love with that annoying, self-satisfied asshole”

“Hmm” Damian said, rubbing his chin. “So it happened after all. I feared it would. I just hoped Luciano would hold out a little longer”

“What?” Noah asked , his anger fuelled anew. ”You expected this to happen?”

“We can’t deny that Doctor Oliver has a certain air about himself, and that he’s unashamed about himself. While Luciano has never acted on his attraction to men in the past, he never really met one that had this kind of charisma. ”

“But you said you talked to Doctor Oliver? Told him to keep away from Luke? “

“Oh ,I did. But it looks like Doctor Oliver is so sure of himself, he didn’t heed my words”

“How did you threaten him anyway?” Noah asked.

Damian pulled the file out of his desk drawer and threw it at Noah.

“Oh my god” Noah said as he looked throw the files. The pictures left him somewhere between disgust and fascination. “He’s really gay!”

Damian chuckled. “What else did you expect?”

“I don’t know… I just thought that as long as I only heard Luke tell me about it, it wasn’t real. Just something he talked about but didn’t do. But those pictures don’t leave much to the imagination about the things those gay men do. That Doctor Oliver does to poor Luke.”

Noah finally stopped his pacing and sat down. “So what will you do?” he asked Damian, hoping his boss would be able to safe Luciano. Noah wasn’t too happy about the things they’d talked about, but he still hoped to safe their friendship if Luciano could be dragged back to the right path.

“We’ll make sure he marries Zoe before he can mess things further up!”

Damian opened another drawer of his desk. “I’m sorry, Noah, but this is going to hurt!”

“What?” Noah asked , but his words didn’t carry as a sudden loud noise disturbed the room.

Moments later Noah felt hot, sharp flashes of pain shooting up his leg. He looked down, his ears still ringing, and saw the ripped hole in his pants, the edges growing steadily darker with blood.

His blood.

Shocked he looked up at Damian and the gun in his hand.

“You shot me?” he asked, still not fully realizing what just had happened.

“I’m sorry, Noah, but it was necessary. It’s the only way to prevent Luciano from making another mistake. You will thank me for my brilliant plan. Once you’re no longer in pain, that is.”

There was a timid knock against the office door.

“Come in, Elsa,” Damian called out and his secretary stepped in.

“Is something, wrong, Mr. Grimaldi? “ she asked as she looked at Noah, who by now had fallen down to the floor and whimpered in pain.

Damian looked with surprise at the hand still holding his gun. “Yes, Elsa, I fear, I forgot that my gun was still loaded. It must have gone off while I talked with Mr. Mayer.”

He put the gun down on his desk. “Can you get me my chauffeur? Tell him to put a plastic cover over the interior. We don’t want to turn this into a bigger mess than necessary.”

While Elsa hurried to do as Damian asked of her, he called out with one last request. “And please call Zoe, I have to send her on a very important errand, before I can get Mr. Mayer to the hospital.

***

Damian walked them right through the emergency room and three floors up to Doctor Oliver’s office.

“Hey, you!” Damian called out to a passing nurse. “Nurse Taylor!” he said after a quick look at her name-tag, ”fetch me Doctor Oliver! Pronto!”

Tears were shining in her eyes as she answered to Damian’s request. “Doctor Oliver’s in surgery,” she said, her voice thick with held back emotion.

“Tell him Damian Grimaldi wants to see him because of an emergency. I’m sure he will be right out.”

“If it is an emergency than perhaps you should go down into the ER, Mr. Grimaldi.” She looked at Noah and the blood seeping trough the cloth he was pressing against the wound. “I’m sure they can help you there.”

“We don’t need the ER, we need Doctor Oliver!” Damian was getting impatient. “Now if you would just go and get him before my assistant bleeds to death here in the corridor…”

Tears were spilling from her eyes as she finally turned and scattered down the hall.

Damian wondered how anyone so close to tears could choose a job like this. He usually preferred to end up in a hospital in Malta rather than Oakdale. There the nurses were tough bitches who loved to relentlessly stick needles in helpless, weak patients. Not like these American girls, who only seemed to work in a hospital because they hoped to catch the eye of some dreamy doctor.

Noah was moaning in pain when Doctor Oliver finally stepped into his office twenty minutes later.

Reid raised an eyebrow when he saw the wound. “You got me out of the operating room for this? Every intern in the ER could take care of that. And knowing the interns in this hospital, that is saying something.”

Damian got up and put a hand on Reid’s shoulder. “Doctor Oliver, we’re here because we need your discretion,“ he said in a low tone. “They would report this kind of injury to the police if we went to just any doctor in the ER.”

“I will have to report a gun shot wound too,” Reid informed him.

“I know, “ Damian began, “but I’m sure you remember that talk we had when you first came to town? This is one of those situations, where I need your help and your silence, Doctor Oliver”

“You said it wouldn’t happen anytime soon. Perhaps not for years. And yet you‘re here already.”

“ I didn’t plan this, Doctor Oliver. And do you really want to load some unnecessary work onto the Oakdale PD just because of some stupid, little accident? They’re overworked anyway. “

“Accident?“ Reid asked as he cleaned out the wound on Noah’s leg.“How do I know that it was really an accident?”

“I was just cleaning my gun when Noah surprised me, and I accidentally pulled the tripper.“ Damian tilted his head as he looked at Reid, “Or do you really think I have any reason to hurt Mr. Mayer? He isn’t just my assistant, he’s like a son to me. That doesn’t make any sense.”

Reid made a noncommittal noise and finished his work on Noah’s wound. “You are aware that this is a waste of my time and talent?” he asked. “This is nothing more than a flesh wound, and I am a brain surgeon!”

“I’ll make sure that the next time I shoot anyone by accident, the bullet goes to the brain.” Damian said as he put his gun to the back of Reid’s head.

“You broke your promise to keep your dirty hands of my son.” Damian’s voice had taken on a dangerous edge.

“I never made such a promise!” Reid tried to keep a calm appearance, despite the cold shiver of terror running down his spine.

“But you should have, Doctor Oliver!” Damian continued. “I told you how much Luciano means so me, and that I would do anything to protect him. And now I have to protect him from you. So move, we have a car waiting for us!“


	24. Chapter 24

Reid woke up with a horrible headache. Somewhere between being shoved into the waiting car by Damian Grimaldi and now he must have been drugged and lost consciousness.

Reid remembered Luciano telling him that his father no longer belonged to the shadier parts of the Grimaldi family. Well, either Luciano was wrong or he didn’t know better.

Or Damian Grimaldi had reverted to his old ways just for him. Reid should be really proud of himself in that case. Unfortunately he didn’t feel like laughing about it.

He knew his brain was going down that road, because the other option would be to let his claustrophobia take over and drive him crazy. Still it was getting harder and harder not to just give into his panic. He was in a dark room and couldn’t tell how big it was.

Reid maneuvered to all fours. He had to find a way out of his prison. But all Reid could find was cold, wet walls all around him. It didn’t help that he found out that he also only had just a few steps to either side of him. The room had to be even smaller than that fucked up cabin of the elevator he had been stuck in not so long ago, but than he hadn’t been so alone.

He sat up against one of the rough walls and tried to calm his breathing, but it was no use. His pulse kept elating, he was sweating through his cloths, and in the end he couldn’t stand it anymore.

He screamed!

***

After the incident at Java Luciano returned to Fairwinds rather than back to work, knowing that he’d be unable to concentrate on work.

Luciano had know that his family wouldn’t like his decision to give this homosexual relationship with Reid a chance, but he hadn’t expected hate and disgust.

He had tried to tell Noah first, hoping Noah would be able to support him, since he had to understand how hard it was to pretend being something that he wasn’t? And now Noah hated him.

If Noah couldn’t understand how would everyone else react?

Sure, his mother and Holden would be excited tat he finally took their advice and followed his heart, But his father? Zoe?

He had to tell Zoe next. He had managed to avoid her yesterday, but he couldn’t lock himself in his room every night and pretend to be too tiered to spend time with her. She would get suspicious if he kept avoiding sleeping with her again. And he couldn’t do that any longer, not after what had happened with Reid.

Luciano restlessly wandered around his room, trying to find the right words to explain himself. Within an hour a sudden knock on his door made him flinch.

“Hey Luciano.”

Zoe stepped into his bedroom, and flung her arms around him

“Already home?” he asked, trying to get out of her embrace. “Didn’t you say it was going to get late because of that project in Belgium?”

She smile at him. “That was the plan but than I got a phone call from my doctor:”

“Is something wrong? Are you sick?” He was truly worried. He may not have the same kind of feelings for her as he had for Reid, but that didn’t mean he didn’t care for her.

“No,” she shook her head, her smile widening. “I’m pregnant! We’re getting a baby, Luciano!” She hugged him harder, planting kisses all over his face.

Luciano was too stunned to do anything but pat her on the back.

“That’s … that’s …”

“That’s fantastic, isn’t it?”

“I .. ehm … I guess.” Luciano still struggled to find the right answer to this new development. “It happened so fast,“ he finally managed. ”

“Yes, we’re so lucky. Aren‘t we?”

Luciano nodded. Lucky. Of course he should feel lucky, but somehow he couldn’t. How could he tell Zoe the truth now? She needed him. Her child … their child … needed him. He couldn’t turn his back on them now, no matter what he felt for Reid.

“Are you sure you‘re pregnant?” he asked, feeling guilty for hoping that there was still the possibility of a different result.

“I’m sure!” Zoe answered. “I’m never late. That’s why I went right to my doctor when I realized that I was overdue.”

Luciano nodded, she sure knew better about such things than he did.

“So… what are we going to do now? Pick names? Take breathing lessons?”

Zoe laughed and raked her fingers though his hair.

“Oh, Luciano, you’re so adorable,” She pulled him close and kissed him. “No, names and Lamaze still have time. First we need to get married!”

“Married?” Luciano had never himself squeak like that. “Married?” he tried again, trying to keep his voice even.

“But of course. We can’t have a baby without getting married”

“A bit late for that,” Luciano muttered.

Zoe kissed him again, as he was still too stunned to push her away. “Oh, don’t worry, a few days or so wont hurt anyone. Babies hardly ever come on time. They don’t have day planners yet. We just can’t wait too long. I guess we could organize it in a couple of days”

Could shivers were running done Luciano’s spine. It was all so sudden, so fast.

“Do you really think we should get married right away?” he finally managed to ask. “I’m sure we could wait a little longer. Nobody is scandalized anymore when the baby comes before the wedding.”

Zoe shook her head determinedly. “I want the wedding now! It my not be important to other people, but it is to me. I want to get married before the baby is born and before I no longer fit in a nice dress.”

“Okay, Okay,” Luciano held up a hand to calm her. “Just not today”

“Of course not today. We need to talk to Damian first, and get my dress, and invite some guests. So maybe in a day or two.”

***

As Reid woke up again he was still engulfed in darkness.

On top his headache this time his throat also felt scratchy and swallowing hurt.

He remembered the kidnapping and waking up trapped, realizing how small his prison was and screaming himself until he lost consciousness again.

This time the panic claimed him even faster…


	25. Chapter 25

The third time Reid woke up from unconsciousness, he felt betrayed by his body. Was going mad and blacking out really all he could do? It sure as hell would not get him out of this hole.

He tried stay calm, taking inventory of his body. His headache was gone, but his throat was hurting and dry from dehydration and the panicked screaming. His pants hung clammy from his body, as he must have wetted himself in one of his panic circles. His hands were caked with dried blood, from scratching at the walls.

He couldn’t do much about most of this, but he could try to keep his hands safe from further damage.

Worrying about his hands. As if it mattered how messed up they would get, if he would never make it out of this hole alive.

His dry laugh about that sounded dangerously close to a sob to his own ears.

Still, he reached down to untie his laces and slip his shoes off so he could slip his hands inside instead, soaking up the warmth for a little while.

***

“Luciano, hello!” Katie greeted him as he knocked at her door late in the night.

“Hey Katie! Is Reid here?”

She looked at him with a frown. “Reid? No, of course not.”

“Why wouldn’t he be here?” Luciano asked, equality confused.

“Well, he left Oakdale, didn’t he?”

“He did?”

Luciano felt as if he’d been hit in the gut by a fright train

Katie nodded her head, as she let Luciano step inside. “I thought you must know, since he kind of worked for you.”

“No, this comes as a total surprise.” Luciano fell more down onto the sofa than he sat down to it, his legs unwilling to carry his weight any longer.

Katie went to fetch a note from the kitchen. “I must say, it came as a bit of a surprise to me too. I mean, yeah, he wasn’t really happy here, but I expected him to at least say goodbye in person, not just leave this.”

She handed Luciano the note. It didn’t say much. Only that Reid had left because he had gotten a better job offer, and that he was leaving Katie a nice sum of money for the short time he lived at her place. There was no new address, no mention of the hospital that had hired him, no message for Katie to give to Luciano.

Luciano frowned at the note. “Why would he leave without telling me?” he mumbled under his breath. “You said he wasn’t happy here?”

Katie sat down beside Luciano, who handed her the note back. “There was hardly a day he didn’t complain about how backwards Oakdale really is, wasn’t he?”

Luciano nodded. “I just never took it to serious. You know, just something he said, without really meaning it.”

“So did I. There even were a couple of days when it looked like he had a reason to like it here a bit more. I mean a reason beside the new wing at Memorial.” Katie looked at Luciano, pausing for a moment. “I’m usually not one to gossip … much, but I think Reid had meet someone here, but it didn’t work out. I think that may had to do with him wanting to leave, more than anything else.”

Luciano blushed, looking away from Katie.

“Oh,” Katie said as she realized. “Oh Luciano, I’m sorry!”

He shrugged with a sad smile. “Guess it took me too long to make up my mind.”

***

Reid was sitting at Katie’s kitchen table, a feast laid out in front of him.

The fresh bread, still warm.

The spicy smell of salami, cut into even slices.

The mix of butter, mayonnaise and mustard, creating a delicious layer, between the bread and the crispy leaves of lettuce.

Tick slices of tomatoes between the salami and the salad, the creation topped off with tangy pickles and heavy pieces of egg underneath another half of bread.

He could almost feel the weight of the unique but familiar masterpiece of lunch in his hands. Could almost feel the explosion of tastes the first bite would offer.

But here, in this dark chamber of desperation, his body didn’t even have enough strength left salivate at the idea of the perfect salami sandwich.

So he tried to ignore it as the dank air suddenly smelled like fresh coffee with just the right amount of caramel added.

He knew, the faster he could accept all this as just a hallucination by his weakening body, the sooner his ordeal would be over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the lack of updates right now, but I have some health problems, that are getting in the way. And while the story is finished, I don't want to post anything I'm not fully happy with.  
> Sorry again.


	26. Chapter 26

Reid found himself in Katie’s kitchen again. This time there was a huge bowl of fresh fruit in front of him.

He selects a fat, ripe kiwi and cuts into it with a knife like he cuts into a brain tumor with a scalpel.  
The first bite is delicious. The texture of the fruit perfect, the taste sweet yet refreshing. Juice is running down his chin and fingers.

Reid groans at the idea of him sucking the wet sweetness from his fingers. He doesn’t like kiwis at all, but right now, in his need, they are the only thing he can think of.

For the life of him, he couldn’t tell how much time had passed since he had ended up in this hole. How much time he had left till his body would succumb to stress, fear, thirst, hunger.

By the state he was in, it had to be more than a day, perhaps even two. He had given up on hope that Damian Grimaldi would send a goon to get him out of here, tell him that this had only been a warning. That he should leave town before they would really hurt him. No, he was thrown in here to suffer, die and rot.

Oh, how Reid hated the Grimaldi family. How he hated the way they had lured and trapped him in this town that time had forgotten. How they just threw money around and promised him all he’d ever wanted.

He’d been easy prey, and fell right into their trap. He’d believed their shit about wanting to help the hospital, wanting to help the poor and injured, wanting to help Reid.

He’d been turned into their toy by the promise of a state of the art neurology unit and the attention of a pretty, young blond.

Reid should never have allowed Luciano Grimaldi to get to him, get into his brain, his heart. Because Reid Oliver didn’t have a heart.

Well, he had that thing that pumped in his chest, made sure blood was flowing into all his extremities, but that was it.

That muscle may sometimes beat faster with desire and want, but he’d never let things go so out of hand that it would ache with emotion. At least not until he let the Grimaldi’s take over his life.

Now his heart would speed up just by being around Luciano, just by thinking about him. It was aching if Luciano wasn’t around or when he was telling Reid how much he wanted to be straight.

Love was stupid. So obviously Reid was stupid, because he still wanted Luciano Grimaldi, and would give anything to be able to kiss him one last time. So perhaps Reid did have a heart after all.

And look where it had landed him.

***

Reid woke from another blackout. He had hoped it would have been his last, that his suffering had finally come to an end, even if that meant death.

But there was just too much noise to stay unconscious. The loud banging of a metal door and muttered voices.

“Shove him inside,” somebody above Reid said.“ Nobody will look for him here, this place has been deserted for years. He can scream his lungs out all he wants and it will make no difference.”

A second man grunted in agreement as he dragged something heavy along.

Reid realized that these people had not come to rescue him, but to give him unexpected company. He would have laughed if he’d still had enough strength to do so. Welcome to Oakhell, Illinois, the only place in the universe where enough kidnappings happened for people to end up stowed away in the same place.

Reid pretended he hadn’t noticed anything happening. Half wondering if they would go and put their prisoner somewhere else if they discovered that this place was already occupied or if they wouldn’t care and just leave the two of them in here together.

Another part of him hoping that he could use the momentum of surprise to get out and flee, despite his state.

The beam of a flashlight hit him, and he squinted at the sudden brightness.

“Hey Dave, “ the first voice said, “there is already somebody in the hole!”

“What?” the second guy grunted. “It should be empty. We didn’t put anyone inside there in almost a year.”

A shiver ran down Reid’s spine. This was a perfect place to let people vanish after all. And these thugs didn’t do so for the first time either.

“Someone else must have found this hidey-hole and decided to us…,” Dave didn’t get to finish his sentence, as ,with a loud bang, he landed up against the wall opposite Reid.

The second thug followed seconds later as the seemingly unconscious man they had dragged in suddenly jumped up and kicked them down. He obviously had had the same idea as Reid, but was still strong enough to make the moment of surprise work for him.

“Come on,” the guy said as soon as the goons where out for the count. “We need to get out of here and the door closed before they come to their senses.” He grabbed for Reid’s hand and pulled him up and out.

The stranger dead bolted the steel door over the entrance to the hole, trapping both his attackers inside their own prison.

Reid sank down to the ground as soon as the man let him go. “Who are you?” he asked with a scratchy voice. “And who are they?”

“Dusty Donovan,” his rescuer introduced himself, “and those are some dirty bastards, hoping to get some money,” he said while pointing at the trap door. “And you are?”

“Dr. Reid Oliver”

“Never heard of you. New in town?”

Reid nodded.

“Who got you into trouble?” Dusty asked

“Grimaldi!” Reid pressed out.

“Oh that son of a bitch!” Obviously Dusty Donovan had made the accountancy of Damian Grimaldi himself in the past. “You need to get to a hospital, man. You look like shit!”

Reid grunted in agreement

“And we need to get Margo and Jack from he police here. Get those bastards in real trouble, and perhaps we get Damian Grimaldi too. Would be only fair for once”


	27. Chapter 27

Luciano stood in front of his wardrobe. He was supposed to choose a suit for his wedding, but all he could do was starring at the light gray suit that still hung soiled over one of the doors.

Had it really only been two weeks since that day at the pond? It seemed so much longer ago. He reached out to touch the grass stains, trace his fingers over the dry crust of his come. It was all still there, still real.

Luciano took a couple of steps back and sat down on his bed, his legs feeling weak. He couldn't get married to Zoe. Not today, not at a later date. He didn't love her.

Even more importantly, he didn't want to fall in love with her. He wanted Reid.

Only now, after learning that Reid had left Oakdale, Luciano fully realized how much he wanted him. How empty life without Reid suddenly seemed. He was only gone for a couple of days and already Luciano missed Reid's snarky comments, his insults, his rude interactions with everyone.

Luciano had to find him again, drag him back to Oakdale and make this thing between them work.

There was no space for Zoe in this. Sure, the baby would be taken care off, or at least Luciano would try to be a responsible father anyway. It didn’t matter whom he shared his bed with to be a good, caring parent.

Luciano took a deep breath and got up. He had to talk to his father and Zoe before any of the guests arrived. There was no need to do this in front of an audience and turn it into an even bigger spectacle than necessary.

Afterwards he could start looking for Reid. Luciano would get all the private investigators on the Grimaldi payroll on his tail by the end of the day. Perhaps he’d ask his grandmother for even more help.

A man like Reid couldn't hide forever. Sooner or later some hospital would brag about hiring him or there would be an article in some medical journal about his brilliance.

Once he found Reid Luciano would do everything to get him back. No matter if he had to bribe Reid or kidnap him or beg on his knees. Luciano would show Reid how much he meant to him, and that there was nothing he wouldn’t do for a second chance.

But first things first…

***

Reid was in a bed at Memorial, hocked up to an IV pumping fluids into his body. Bob Hughes himself bandaging up his scrapes and bruises. Not something Reid was used to seeing a chief of staff doing.

“I’m really sorry, Dr. Oliver, that your first lasting impression of Memorial is going to be a stay of your own as a patient here,“ Bob told him.

“I think my first lasting impression of this so-called hospital will be having a gun pointed at me,” Reid retorted. Or fucking Luciano Grimaldi up the wall in the conference room, he silently added.

“Ah, yes, I see how that could be something you will remember for the rest of your life,” Bob said as he finished up with the bandages. “But at least you can use this experience to see how we take care of our patients.”

Reid just snorted. “From what I learned today, the staff must be used to taking care of kidnapping victims, as this seems to be an everyday occurrence in Oakdale.”

Bob shook his head. “Not daily. We only have about two kidnappings a week.”

Reid rolled his eyes.

“But in turn we have low rate of common maladies and injuries. I think we had to perform a total of three appendectomies last year,” Bob continued. “I guess every town has it’s own kind of …shall we say… crazy. Here in Oakdale it’s kidnappings.”

Bob let go of Reid‘s left hand, all done with bandaging him up. He moved to throw away the packing material. He turned back to the bed just in time to catch Reid fiddling with his IV, his movements clumsy due to his wrapped up fingers.

“What do you think you’re doing, doctor?” he asked as he put a hand over Reid’s.

“I’m going home,” Reid answered irritated. “You didn’t really think I was going to stick around here, didn’t you?”

“You should at least stay overnight.”

“I don‘t think so!“ Reid shuddered, „I‘m not going to be on the mercy of any nursing staff.“

Bob looked at him and shook his head. “You don’t seem to have a lot of confidence in your co-  
workers.”

“With good reason.”

“I still advice against you checking yourself out.”

“Well, thanks, but I think I know what I’m doing!” Reid got up but after two steps his legs gave away.

Bob had expected as much and was already there to catch Reid and maneuver him back into bed.

“Now, now, Doctor Oliver, it will be easier for everyone if you just listen to my sound advice. If you stay put until I’m back later this evening, I might even bring you back a piece of wedding cake.”

“Wedding cake?” Reid asked, getting interested. “Who’s getting married? Anyone I know”

“I think so,” Bob said, as he prepared a new IV syringe. “It’s Luciano Grimaldi and Zoe Finn”

“What?”

“You sound surprised,” Bob paused for a moment, then nodded. “But I guess it must come as a surprise. They’ve been engaged for a while, but the wedding invitation came out of nowhere. We only got it yesterday and you’ve been gone for days.”

“Oh!” was all Reid could say, his face falling.

“You and Luciano have become friends over the past weeks, haven’t you?” Bob asked.

“I thought so, but I wonder how good I really know him.” Reid leaned back in bed and let Bob work the new IV into his arms without making a fuss.

***

Luciano found his father down in the dining-room, overseeing the wedding preparations.

“Hey,” Luciano called out, “I have something to tell you. “

“Ah, Luciano, I hope you have good news. Did Noah call because he changed his mind?” Damian asked.

Luciano shook his head. “No, he’s still not talking to me. It’s something else we need to talk about. Where’s Zoe?”

“Upstairs, getting ready, of course! It‘s her special day after all.”

“Well, we should get her. She needs to hear this as well.”

“But, Luciano, can’t it wait till after the ceremony? You’re not supposed to see her now, it’s bad lu…” Before Damian could finish there were heavy footsteps coming from the hall, and the dining-room door got kicked open with a bang.

“Freeze! Police!”

Margo and her men rushed into the room, taking hold of Damian. “What’s the matter, Margo?” he asked calmly while she cuffed him, as if a thing like this happened in his house all the time.

“Looks like we finally caught you red-handed,” she said with a smirk. “You are arrested for the kidnapping and attempted murder of Reid Oliver.”

“What?” Luciano burst out. “Kidnapping? Reid?” His brain had a hard time making sense of the words. He staggered back a few steps until his legs hit a chair, and he fell into it heavily. His heart beating as if he’d just run a marathon.

“It’s a misunderstanding!” Damian tried to explain to both Margo and Luciano.

Luciano looked from his father to Margo and back again. She shook her head.

“Dr. Oliver was trapped by the abandoned dock-houses. He only managed to escaped today because he got unexpected help from Dusty Donovan, who managed to get into some trouble himself. There’s no way this was a mistake. It looks like it’s one of Damian’s schemes, that‘s why were here.”

“Is Reid hurt?” Luciano asked, a chill running down his spine as Margo’s words sunk in.

“He’s in bad shape. Dusty got him out just in time. He’s getting checked out at Memorial as we speak.”

Luciano turned to Damian. "Why did you do something like that? Didn't you assure me you'd changed? What did Reid ever do to you?"

"I did it for you!" Damian yelled, seemingly having forgotten Margo's presence. "I wanted to protect you from him. I couldn't let him undo all the hard work of the past years. Couldn’t let him turn you gay again."

"Well, guess what, Damian,” Luciano yelled back, "I am gay! Now and in the past. And in the future as well!"

"Luciano..." Damian tried again, but Luciano just turned to face Margo. "Take him away, will you? I don't want to see him again."

She nodded at Luciano and pushed Damian out the door none to gently.

Luciano closed his eyes and took a couple of deep, calming breaths.

He needed to get more information on Reid's state, but as soon as he left the dinning room he saw Jack and yet more police officers bring Zoe down the stairs. Her wedding dress was flowing around her body, almost hiding that she had been handcuffed as well.

"Don't tell me she's been involved in all this too?" Luciano asked. His voice was stained and his head pounded. While he had left his room with the intention to cancel the wedding, this wasn’t how he had imagined it happening.

Jack looked at him with sympathy. "She and Noah Mayer have been Damian's cohorts," he explained. “I wish I could tell you different on a day like this.”

“It’s not your fault, Jack.“ Luciano's shoulders slumped until he saw one of the officers shove Zoe hard between the shoulder to get her moving. That snapped Luciano out of his befuddled state.

"Careful!" he called out. "She's pregnant!"

At that Zoe stopped once again, two steps up from the bottom of the stairs. Her shoulders shook with laughter. "Oh Luciano, you're so gullible. Of course I'm not pregnant!"

Luciano frowned as he looked up at her. "You're not? But then why did you tell me you were?"

She kept laughing. "To hurry along the marriage. We were already engaged for over a year, and you kept avoiding the topic any time Damian or I tried to talk with you about the wedding. “ She shook her head, trying to get her hair out of her face without the use of her hands. “Plus Damian hoped it would distract you from wondering about the whereabouts of that doctor. We couldn’t have you get suspicious about his sudden departure or go searching for him.”

Luciano nodded. “I was about to do just that. Did you force him to write that letter for Katie?“

"No, I wrote it," she admitted, head held high. "I must have done a good job, if you both believed it."

Luciano had heard enough. Without listening to Jack and Margo calling after him he rushed out of the house to his car. He had to get away from Fairwinds and all the house represented to him now.

***

“Fancy seeing you here, Mr. Grimaldi,” Reid said, his voice strained with the attempt of sounding sarcastic. “Are you always visiting people in the hospital, after your father put them there?”

“You look like shit!” Luciano said instead of giving Reid’s biting tone any attention.

Reid tried to shrug but flinched in discomfort halfway through the motion. “Getting dumped into some hole for a couple of days will do that to you!”

“Sorry about that,“ Luciano shifted from on foot to the other, shoving his hands into his pockets. “Just so you know I didn’t know what my fa... what Damian was up to. Let alone that I agree with his actions.”

“I didn’t think you did.”

Luciano pulled a chair up next to Reid’s bed and reached for Reid’s hand as he sat down. “I worried about you. Just leaving without saying goodbye in person didn’t seem like something you’d do.” He squeezed Reid’s fingers.

For some long moments they just stayed there like this, then Reid cleared his throat. “So where’s Mrs. Grimaldi? I’m sure she can’t wait until your back at her side. Don’t want to delay you and get you in trouble because you stayed away too long from the celebration. We don‘t want to get in trouble should she ever find out that we had more than just a strictly professional relationship. We should leave no doubt that it was all before today. And I need to stop this babbling. It makes me look stupid.”

“Mrs. Grimaldi?” Luciano asked, frowning. “Oh, you mean Zoe? “ He shook his head while he continued. “We didn’t get married. She got arrested for helping Damian doing this to you. “

Reid pulled his hand out of Luciano’s grip. “Sorry about that!” he said, his expression closing off. “If I’d knew the timing would be so inconvenient I’d waited with escaping a bit longer.”

“Reid!” Luciano hurried to reach for his hand again. “ I didn’t mean it like that. I wouldn’t have married her anyway. I was just about to tell my fath… Damian that there wouldn’t be a wedding today when the police came running in to arrest them.” Luciano stroked over the thick bandages on Reid’s knuckles. “There was no way I could have married her, not when you were all I could think about. And it’s been like that for days. Since I thought that you’d left actually.

“Is that so, Mr. Grimaldi?”

“Yes!“ Luciano nodded with a smile. “I want to be with you, not her.”

“But wouldn’t that make you gay?”

“Yeah, I guess that would make me gay. Is that a problem for you?” Luciano asked with a wink.

“Absolutely not!” Reid said, now smiling as well. “Actually, I prefer my boyfriends to be gay”

“Boyfriend?” Luciano asked.

“You got a problem with that definition?”

Luciano just leaned in and kissed Reid’s chapped lips.

“I’ll take that as a no!” Reid said once Luciano sat back in his chair.

“No, no problem at all!” Luciano took a deep breath. “There’s just one thing… would you mind not calling me Mr. Grimaldi or Luciano any longer?”

“But that’s your name.”

“I’ve got another one. It’s Luke Snyder!”

“Luke Snyder,” Reid repeated the name, letting it roll off his tongue, “sounds good to me!¨”

 

The End!


End file.
